"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
May. 14th, 2004 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphikiSo, something that came up on my friends list - can you avoid answering rude questions? Can you say, "None of your business," or do you feel you have to answer the question?
So, thinking about this, I've concluded the following things:
Answering "rude" questions
I rarely mind answering questions honestly, unless there's an assumption in the question that is incorrect. As I said in a comment,
See, I can't think of too many questions that would offend me, if they were asked with politeness and respect for my answer - i.e. if someone says, "Well, I'm kind of curious, and you don't have to answer this..." and they mean it, well - I almost never mind answering. Because to me, that says that they have respect for the information.
The questions that really bother me are like the above
["When are you going to give up and accept that [the Christian] god exists?"]
- they are asked in such a way that an assumption about me is inherent in the question. I don't mind, for example, people asking, "Are you gay?" if they just want to know if I'm gay. But I will get offended if they ask in a tone that implies they've already decided I must be.
I don't have trouble refusing to answer questions, evading questions or just outright lying in response to a question (if I cannot see a way to evade that does not give the true answer away, and I see no harm coming to the other person because I lied). I just don't have a reason to do it very often.
In general, I think I would only evade or lie if I felt the person asking the question was somehow a threat to me. Batten down the hatches!
Another thing I will do is give the last sure response to a question - the response I used to give, which I am not now sure is entirely accurate. I will keep replying that way until I am sure of a new answer - I hate being in a vulnerable not-sure period, where I fear other people will try to influence me, so I don't open that up to scrutiny unless I really want other people's opinions.
Asking "rude" questions
Really, my problem is more the other side of the coin, that I tend to be too intrusive.
It's intrinsic to my nature that THE most important thing to me is information - how much someone gives or withholds, and when strongly affects how I see them. Someone who is reticent at a bad time will probably lose my affection completely.
People have used withholding information from me at crucial times as a way to manipulate and hurt me, and I can take that, depending on the context, as a very wounding insult when it happens in present time.
One of the things I have a big problem with is not saying, "What are you talking about?" to people who clearly want to talk privately. (i.e., they pulled off from a larger group to talk.)
Even if I know them, the most common response to that is, of course:
*slow head turn*
*long stare*
"None of your business!"
...and I've been trying to train myself to accept that. It's hard, because I am asking in the first place in order to test other people - can I trust them to not keep information from me? And when they do, I have a tendency to see it as a rejection of the highest order, even though I have no right to the information I'm asking for.
I've recently dug this out of my psyche, because up until a year ago, this was totally unconscious, and I couldn't understand why this behaviour of mine is so compulsive.
Now that I know what's going on, I'm trying to stop doing it, but sometimes the best I can do after blurting out, "What are you talking about?" is to just immediately say, "Sorry, none of my business!" I'm finding it hard to be successful in not asking in the first place, because it seems to happen before my brain can be engaged.
Really, I've had a lot of the same experiences as those with less boundaries than me, but it seems to have made me sneaky and snoopy, rather than compulsively open about myself. Although I'm a lot better now than when I was a kid, when I snooped into everyone's business and lied about everything.
So I suppose I'm doing okay.
So, thinking about this, I've concluded the following things:
Answering "rude" questions
I rarely mind answering questions honestly, unless there's an assumption in the question that is incorrect. As I said in a comment,
See, I can't think of too many questions that would offend me, if they were asked with politeness and respect for my answer - i.e. if someone says, "Well, I'm kind of curious, and you don't have to answer this..." and they mean it, well - I almost never mind answering. Because to me, that says that they have respect for the information.
The questions that really bother me are like the above
["When are you going to give up and accept that [the Christian] god exists?"]
- they are asked in such a way that an assumption about me is inherent in the question. I don't mind, for example, people asking, "Are you gay?" if they just want to know if I'm gay. But I will get offended if they ask in a tone that implies they've already decided I must be.
I don't have trouble refusing to answer questions, evading questions or just outright lying in response to a question (if I cannot see a way to evade that does not give the true answer away, and I see no harm coming to the other person because I lied). I just don't have a reason to do it very often.
In general, I think I would only evade or lie if I felt the person asking the question was somehow a threat to me. Batten down the hatches!
Another thing I will do is give the last sure response to a question - the response I used to give, which I am not now sure is entirely accurate. I will keep replying that way until I am sure of a new answer - I hate being in a vulnerable not-sure period, where I fear other people will try to influence me, so I don't open that up to scrutiny unless I really want other people's opinions.
Asking "rude" questions
Really, my problem is more the other side of the coin, that I tend to be too intrusive.
It's intrinsic to my nature that THE most important thing to me is information - how much someone gives or withholds, and when strongly affects how I see them. Someone who is reticent at a bad time will probably lose my affection completely.
People have used withholding information from me at crucial times as a way to manipulate and hurt me, and I can take that, depending on the context, as a very wounding insult when it happens in present time.
One of the things I have a big problem with is not saying, "What are you talking about?" to people who clearly want to talk privately. (i.e., they pulled off from a larger group to talk.)
Even if I know them, the most common response to that is, of course:
*slow head turn*
*long stare*
"None of your business!"
...and I've been trying to train myself to accept that. It's hard, because I am asking in the first place in order to test other people - can I trust them to not keep information from me? And when they do, I have a tendency to see it as a rejection of the highest order, even though I have no right to the information I'm asking for.
I've recently dug this out of my psyche, because up until a year ago, this was totally unconscious, and I couldn't understand why this behaviour of mine is so compulsive.
Now that I know what's going on, I'm trying to stop doing it, but sometimes the best I can do after blurting out, "What are you talking about?" is to just immediately say, "Sorry, none of my business!" I'm finding it hard to be successful in not asking in the first place, because it seems to happen before my brain can be engaged.
Really, I've had a lot of the same experiences as those with less boundaries than me, but it seems to have made me sneaky and snoopy, rather than compulsively open about myself. Although I'm a lot better now than when I was a kid, when I snooped into everyone's business and lied about everything.
So I suppose I'm doing okay.
