When Words Hurt

I hate prejudice! Prejudice against obese people is the one that hits me where I live, but I truly hate any type of prejudice, and I find myself becoming angry about it more frequently as I get older. Prejudice is a close-minded, irrational bias against some group of people – usually based on some cultural or societal perception – that leads, or allows, people to express themselves in a way that is demeaning and devaluing to those about whom they speak. Sometimes, this prejudice is so ingrained in their background that their expression of it becomes natural and without forethought. But words can hurt others deeply, and even jokes made at the expense of others are unkind and unacceptable.

This was brought home to me this week by a blog post by someone I know (I won’t name the person, so don’t ask) who posted and publicized (on Twitter) her newest rant, which she referred to as “FAT, STUPID People”! I was absolutely shocked and frankly, didn’t know what to think. However, I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I read her post. Her subject was an incident that she said happened at the grocery store, where she was confronted by a “fat beluga” for taking all of the sale pasta, which the woman went so far as to take away from her. She ranted on and on about how huge the woman was, using all sorts of nasty, vituperative and vulgar clichés. Reading it made me want to vomit, it was that nasty.

Now, this person is what is generally called a “drama queen” – someone who can take a small, seemingly insignificant incident in her life and turn it into a huge, nearly international incident – always with her as the innocent victim. But even if every word she wrote was true, the size of the woman she referred to had nothing at all to do with the situation. The woman was pushy and incredibly rude, yes – but she could have as easily been a normal sized person and acted the same way. Her size didn’t cause her to grab the pasta, as the writer assumed – it was most likely her desire to feed her family for less, rather than her being a greedy pig, as the writer characterized her. The woman was wrong to do what she did. But the writer was also wrong to unleash such a stream of invective about the woman’s weight.

One of the reasons I found this so difficult to take was that I thought she was someone who was aware of my battle and would not have deliberately said something so hurtful. She not only did that, she was angry when I confronted her about it and asked her to stop being so offensive. She ranted on and on about how I was just another fat tub of lard and I had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t write. In that respect, she is right – I probably should not have gone as far as to ask her to stop. I probably should have stopped at telling her that she was offending me and others. She has a right to write anything she chooses, just like the neo-Nazis, the KKK, terrorists and I do. We all enjoy the freedom of speech that we find on the internet. In the end, I exercised my right to not subject myself to that type of offensive negativity – I “unfollowed” her on Twitter so that I didn’t have to be poisoned by her venom any longer. I hope that someday she might find some peace in her life, but that won’t happen until she learns to take responsibility for herself and her actions and stop blaming others and “acting out” to get attention.

Remember the old saying “Sticks and stone will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? I guess words will never put a cast on my leg or stitches in my arm. But they certainly hurt me emotionally, as I’m assuming they do you, as well. I experienced that from the other side this week when I called a friend an unflattering name – I was only joking, but he was in a bad place and didn’t get that. I hurt and angered him, something I would NEVER do deliberately. But it happened, and I learned from that experience as well. Words can hurt you and others. I know a lot of people who rant and rave about having to watch what they say because of PC (political correctness). Sometimes they’re right, and there certainly are people who LOOK for things to be offended by. But everyone needs to be at least somewhat conscious of how their words may be received and interpreted by others. When in doubt, please don’t say it. It isn’t worth hurting someone – whether it’s someone you love, or not. There is enough hurt in this world already.