[ POLL ] What Are Your Experiences With Microaggression?

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I know what you mean, I grew up around it as well. May have been a bit different for me as I was a teenager around the late 90s-early 00s. I do remember though that this "gay" label was directed more at me and other guys with disabilities than some other people. And I'm not gay but I think it's quite damaging when people try to mislabel who you are.

I hate the term microaggression. But if we are to apply it here than it would say it is fair to say the vast majority of people I know including my loved ones have committed these so-called microaggressions. I used to be more sensitive to them but now I am not so sure.

Some examples of things that might be microaggressions are when someone calls me "Articulate" in the context of my autism being discussed or when someone implies that unlike other Autistic people I am actually "Empathetic." Or when someone calls me an "Inspiration to the Autistics."

I shiver when I hear any of those. But they are meant with the best of intentions and people are free to speak.

Many films that cover disability do have a paternalistic attitude.

So I'm having a conversation with my cousins...

"That sounds like something your dad would say." (Do I sound like an abusive, bigoted drunk?)

"I'm surprised you know so much!" (As if she expected me to be ignorant on any given subject.)

"Money has changed you." (No, I've always been this way. You just never cared to notice.)

"You drive a Mercedes?! Where'd ya steal it?" (As if I was incapable of paying for one.)

To me that is simple begrudgery, something thats common here in Ireland, colonial hangovers and whatnot.
The words used by your family are a mix of manipulative baiting and passive aggression based on personal knowledge of you.

Yes ... "Microaggression" is just another word for it -- those little digs that people think they can get away with while slowly and subtly whittling away at your self-esteem.

Sláinte!

Agreed.

No, not always. People who speak of this concept also understand it's meaning and why it is valid.

There really are people who can't seem to help but find something of little consequence about another person, and then make it a point of ridicule against that person. It's as if a person engaging in microagressive acts believes that he or she is in a superior social position, and thereby has both the right an privilege of keeping their 'inferiors' in their places.

Wonderful exchange. Thanks! To the OP, I do not understand the function of the poll. To me the presentation of the poll which I recall someone kindly helped you make or made for you is well intentioned but muddled. Polls can only cover certain subjective topics in a limited way. Imo it would be better to discuss points in the article, I do not know if you or others are interested in doing that, but basically, for me, at least, the subject is about social slant and power dynamics, and, as Amity put it, group think. I would suggest the ultimate social value and survival value is to think and act as consciously as possible as an individual, with the well being of other sentient creatures consciously in mind, but that is not so easy to do. When you ask other people their experiences of microaggression, imo that is reinforcing their weakness. Personally I think it might be more functional to focus upon the dynamics of microaggression and also to look at how one unconsciously and mechanically perpetrates these stereotypes upon others rather then how others perpetrate these stereotypes upon oneself.

The term "microagression" grates on me. Its one of those terms like "SJW" that you only see on line, and never hear in real life.

A "social justice warrior" sounds like a good thing, but the term is used as an epithet. An epithet for people who worry about things like...microaggressions. That is its an epthet for folks take who their warriorism to far. An old timer like me feels assaulted from both sides by all this Netspeak coming from both sides of the cultural divide.

But I do have an experience with a thing which today would be called a "microaggression" from long before the Net. Experience from the dealing end (not from the receiving end ).

Back in the Eighties I worked at the cash register for a drug store. Like every cashier you get cavalier about how you hand the coin change to the customer. Either you or the customer gets distracted, and you end up placing the change on the counter in front of them instead in their hand.

One day a young lady coworker did that, and the customer made a big stink about it, and complained to the store manager. The customer happened to be an older gentleman, and he also happened to be Black. And it occurred to me that yes... I have heard about that ….how Whites in the Jim Crow South days avoided touching your hand if you were Black and would place change on the counter, and not in your hand. So at that moment I made a vow (the boss didn't say anything about it, this was my directive to my self from myself) that IF the customer is Black, AND if the customer is my parents' generation assume that they grew up in the Pre Civil Rights Days and are emotionally scared by that, AND ALWAYS make damned sure to place their change squarely into the palm of their hand (for both moral reasons, and for my own survival). Blacks my own age back then (late twenties) and younger didn't care, but older folks...gotta pay attention to it.

That failure to place money in a customer hand if they were Black in the segregated South is a textbook example of, what Netspeakers today, would call a "microaggression" by one group against another.

It was a very real thing. But here is the thing. Its a microaggression that was on top of many macroaggressions of the same era.

But on the other hand...

A couple of years ago someone on WP was talking about Weebos who attend Manga club meetings at public libraries. White American kids who cant get enough Japanese cartoon culture. The WP person making the post assumed that everyone reading was aware of how Weebos make "microaggressions" against Asian looking people by being too enthused about imitating Japanese culture, or ...something. I never could get what exactly the issue was. But cautioned us to "not judge the younger ones too harshly because they are just young kids".

I assured the person not to worry because "nobody here on WP will judge ANY one (young or adult) about it, because nobody here but you either knows about nor gives a crap about the issue." And went on to say that she should post this on an Manga/Animie site where folks know about this enough to give a crap about it.

I got pushback from my response from young WPers who protested that they ARE involved in animie/manga fandom culture, and do give a crap. Oh well.

So sometimes I get it, and sometimes I don't.

It might not entirely count, but I sometimes get a "oh my god, this guy is a bit of a weirdo" look from others. It usually manifests itself in the form of a vague and bewildered smile. On a few occasions people have been more direct and asked me if I'm autistic or what disability I have.