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by peterangular 2436 days ago
Anecdotal, but I have definitely seen people be hurt when it's not intentional... and honestly, I feel for them.

I can't truly relate but I can be empathetic. Folks bug me sometimes when they assume in conversation that I'm close to my family (because most people are). In reality I come from an abusive family and tend to not want to talk/think about them.

I understand that it's a completely different thing, but I'm using it to illustrate that _all_ of us should be good to each other, and realize that sometimes we can hurt someone's feelings without a single bit of intention to do so!

1 comments

Right but intention is everything.

There's a difference between someone who knows you don't have a good relationship with your family and then really just being in-your-face about it (that's intentionally making you feel bad about your family), vs someone who doesn't know.

Yes you feel bad in both cases, but you probably feel much worse when it's an intentional thing.

> Yes you feel bad in both cases, but you probably feel much worse when it's an intentional thing.

Of course. I don't want to make people feel bad regardless of intention so my personal SOP is to try not to hurt people in regards to gendered language by keeping it as neutral as possible, and that's pretty easy when it's typed out IMO.