I guess you could say I'm a PC kinda person. I truly try to be sensitive to other people's feelings and respect the lives of people different from me. Consequently, I never engage in ethnic or racial jokes, for example. But, at the same time, I do try to not be overly sensitive with regard to myself. I can poke fun at myself and I can take fun being poked at me. Just yesterday, sitting outside awaiting our turns at oral arguments, a couple of male classmates were complaining about shaving. I listened and smiled and finally interjected "I have no idea what you're talking about." They looked at me and one of them laughed and said "No, I'm sure you changed just so you could avoid shaving!" We all laughed at that.
But, maybe I am overly sensitive about some things. For example, when Jordan initially introduced my blog on his, I was a bit taken aback by his question regarding which pronoun he should use to refer to me (since that time, my appreciation for Jordan has grown substantially and I like and respect him greatly). And, every once in a while someone - trying to be funny, I'm sure - will say something like "he/she/it" when referring to another person. That truly offends me. It has happened twice now within the past week. One came in an e-mail from an Outlaws member and the other was printed in our student newspaper. Who is an it? Are "its" people that are indistinguishable to us as to sex? What about the Intersexed? Where do they fit?
Maybe this harkens back to my youth, when my father used to derisively call any boy he saw with long hair an "it". Maybe it brings up feelings of not belonging, such as those raised recently by the Florida court in Michael Kantaras' decision. I don't know where my negative reaction to this comes from, but it is certainly there.
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