Sunday, January 05, 2014

[rsqejnsf] Boundaries are often ugly

In the context of casual interactions with a sexual undertone, often is said "respect people's boundaries".  Rarely is questioned why a person has those boundaries in the first place.

Those boundaries often encode a tremendous amount of "ugly" personal prejudices: racism, ageism, religious intolerance, class intolerance.

Rationally, it could be the call to respect boundaries is a realistic but defeatist mentality that those boundaries in a person are so powerfully set in stone through years of indoctrination and habit that there is no hope of changing them: King's Dream be damned.

Irrationally, not questioning boundaries could be a mental block to psychologically shield us from the paradox and hypocrisy of both wanting to be a society that eliminates those ugly prejudices but at the same time wants to preserve those prejudices personally.  "Respect boundaries" becomes a euphemism for upholding those ugly prejudices.

I speculate some of the people who deliberately violate other people's boundaries feel they are working for the betterment of society.

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