h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the past week or so, I've been astonished at the number of people I know who I've realized have persecution complexes of all kinds. My roommate has a gender persecution complex. My sister seems to have an intelligence persecution complex (though I may be wrong). A friend of mine has an age persecution complex. Several people I know have persecution complexes about their religions, nationality, physical appearance, heritage, or political stance.

I only bring this up because I have no mental hangups about this at all (so far as I'm aware of). I am a 20 year old white Christian female American of mixed heritage (Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, German, N.A.), democratic/socialist leanings, and a good bit of pudgyness about the tum. However, I have yet to have been at all made fun of, disregarded, or prejudiced against for any of these things. That is, outside of silly kindergarten taunts about my size, but that doesn't really count as they disappeared once I hit middle school (age 12). I have never felt my age was ever a reason that someone might be prejudiced against me - only the experience that I would have gained because of said age. I have never felt disregarded because I happened to be born with two X chromosomes rather than an X and a Y, and never been made fun of since elementary school about the shape of my body.

Call me obtuse, ignorant, oblivious, or all three. Please. I beg you. But I have never run across a single reason to feel persecuted in any way - because I have always felt the moment you stop thinking you're persecuted, you no longer are (if you ever were to begin with). Maybe I'm lucky. Maybe I'm dead stupid. I'm not sure. I know a lot of it has to do with where, when, and how one was brought up. But, at least in my mind, wouldn't one, upon reaching an age where one left home and became *themselves*, soon learn that yes, people did occasionally get run over because of creed/color/orientation/etc., but that's nothing to get a complex over?

Your opinions, please.

Two notes:

1) By complex I mean an obsession that one is persecuted, with or without evidence to support the fact. (ex: my roommate, the one with the gender persecution problem, constantly thinks less of herself for being born female, to the point where she often wishes to be male, and consciously makes an effort to be more masculine in temperment to be more accepted by male cohorts).

2) By persecution I mean more of an imagined extreme prejudice. I don't at all mean *real* religious/racial persecution or the like. I am well aware that that sort of thing happens daily all over the world. I mean more personal prejudices, ones that are created (at least in my opinion) in a person's head about themselves.

Hope that makes sense. It's late, and I've had little sleep.

Amy,

Maybe you are just confident enough in who you are that when you do hear a comment that someone else might take as "persecution," it just rolls off your shoulders. But someone like your roommate is very sensitive to being a woman and so anything having to do with being a woman might be taken in a negative way by her. It's funny how two people can hear the same words and get completely different messages.

Very true. Yet I have never seen myself as insensitive - just slow to assume people are picking on me through over-analyzation of their comments. I know the case with my roommate is that she was raised with all boys in the Styx (deliberate mispelling) of south-west Virginia - she thought there was something terribly wrong with her when she realized that all her siblings had a penis and she did not.

However, there's a difference between a single comment and a complex. If someone were to say to me, when I was trying to do something normally alloted to the males of the species, "Oh, girlie, let the menfolk take care of that. Git inside the house with the kids," I would well know I was being prejudiced against because of my gender. And I would probably give the man who said that a good, solid right hook. Yet there is a difference between that and what my roommate experiences - and I'm not in total control of my mental faculties at the moment so I can't really articulate what I mean. I'll try again tomorrow.

I find myself in the class which might generally be considered "the persecutor" (white, male, finacially secure, etc.). I am grateful for an experience -- rather, a series of experiences -- I had when I was in my early twenties. I spent some time in a rural area of the south of Italy that was liberated by Canadian forces in World War II. (I'm also grateful for the fact that I later became a friend to one of those soldiers who paved the way for the experience I'm actually going to post about. Digression, sorry.)

A number of times while I was in the area, I was mistaken for a German (tall, blonde, very pink). I was denied service in bars. I was even unable to buy nice ripe, red tomatoes from a roadside cart. In some cases there was a moment of pause and then the Italian party to the transaction would ask "Deutsch?" to which I would promptly reply "Canadese!" Immediately I would be given the shoe store owners own morning espresso, or four kilos of the most wonderful tomatoes instead of the green, spotty ones I'd been offered a moment before.

I found that these experiences were wonderfully sensatising: I had been given the opportunity to be discriminated against -- but with an escape hatch. I hope that when I meet someone whose been kicked around by circumstance I can feel just a tiny little bit of what it is like to be in their shoes, and I hope that I will react to them in a way that will not push them deeper.

In a nutshell, Amy, I think it is wonderful that you are in the position of confidence that you find yourself. I feel quite sure that you will stay were you are and not let anyone grind you down. The advice I would give you, although I suspect you don't need it, is to remember that there are real reasons out there for people to feel persecuted, and that it isn't simply a case of "complexes". And sometimes there are hidden reasons of history for what may seem the over-reacting sensitivities we see in other people.

Nice to meet you.


(hello Ms. Augen)

Roomie has a problem because of the way she was raised - it wasn't just being the only female child - from what I've been told elsewhere, the difference in her worth in the family was emphasized frequently, and her worth was based on her gender. No wonder some people develop a gender complex.

Same with a size complex - if you have heard nothing your whole life but how horrible it is to be 3 pounds overweight, and how perfect everything would be if only you were a size 6, even without the reinforcement of fashion magazines and movie stars all having "perfect" bodies, you'd still believe that.

The prejudice starts at home - if mom and dad can't make you feel good for who you are, you're going to have trouble feeling good about yourself no matter what.

I'm glad you feel like the way you were raised has a lot to do with your lack of feeling inferior. I'm just wondering about your sister now... I'll assume it's more her tendency to strive for perfection academically and her age, plus a few schoolmates who are absolutely obsessed with being academically higher than anyone else. You two really weren't raised any differently - we expected you both to do your best.

Lady Scott has just specified some of the "hidden reasons of history" of which I was thinking.

The *persecution* you described your friends having,seems self inflicted from lack of esteem.
The outward prejudices are something else, an esteem problem of the sender mostly that can ooze onto the vulnerable recievers.

I have had situations where social prejudices have affected me personally, but not as a lifestyle of torment. Thankfully!

I also try not to be unduly prejudiced towards or against myself, as well as others! sounds odd

Thank you for the compliment.

I'm well aware that everyone has reasons for thinking the way they do about themselves and their interactions with others. I have my reasons for not feeling persecuted (in my opinion obliviousness, but I digress), same as those who feel that way have their reasons. My real point in starting this forum was to find out if I was alone in my feeling or not. I am ignorant of a great many things, I've come to find out, and I was wondering if this might also be one of them.

I am getting closer to what I mean by persecution, though - if that clarifies things any further. I mean the obsessive, occasionally baseless assumption that everytime someone is (say) passed over for a job (or some other sort of competition - acceptance to a school, enrollment in a club, participation in a society, whatever - I hope you get the gist) it is because they are a certain creed/race/gender/whatever. That is slightly different than the active persecution that you experienced, anhaga, at least in my opinion.

*really might possibly be going to bed now as it's 10 till 1... wait... 2... darn that Ben Franklin*

both LS and abbi - true indeed. I suppose it's the ones who allow themselves to live "in torment" that interest and worry me.

And I'm thinking I personally got off being *very* lucky to have supportive parents and friends who liked me rather than any tangible thing, albeit I went to a school that was colored a lot by class/size/intelligence prejudices.

Really am going to bed now. Honest. I promise. Maybe.

*extra note*

I've been working on a paper involving Ophelia from Hamlet and Desdemona from Othello all day - so I'm a bit entrenched in prejudices and persecutions right now... perhaps that explains some of my thoughts/assumptions/etc.

maybe I too am dense because of the hour, but, are you asking whether anyone else out here spends their lives never feeling persecuted (as you define it -- not just being denied ripe Italian tomatoes )? If that's what you're asking, well, I'm like you. I feel pretty comfortable in the world. I just feel like it's important to say "thank you" to a lot of people each day and they seem to appreciate it.

Okay, I'm blabbing.

Essentially that's what I was asking. Though I suppose it's a bit presumptuous as I'm relatively young - Lord knows what the next 60-80 years could bring.

I don't know that they "allow" themselves to live in torment - the self images are so firmly planted in their minds that it could take decades of reprogramming to reshape their self images.

There is also a lot of prejudice out there against females/fat/short/different races - you name it. Those prejudices do not make the reshaping of self-worth an easy task. They conspire against it. It's not impossible, but every time the person who has managed to improve their self-image is faced with yet another instance of prejudice against whatever their particular "deficiency" might be, they're going to have to fight to keep the mental recordings that tell them they're inadequate/worthless from starting up again.

on the subject of Ophelia and Desdemona:

(if you feel like extra reading)

"Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" by Mary Pipher may perhaps be of some relevence to the subject of this thread.

and

"Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)" by Ann-Marie MacDonald may be relevent to your paper (and it's a really fun read!)

Strange as it sounds, the paper is to be from our own heads, not out of outside research. (the prof knows we can do research papers in our sleep and form a thesis from other people's opinions. He really wants to know if we can read carefully and figure stuff out on our own...) But I may check those out later on Project Muse or J-Stor.

*someone can't sleep*

Amy,

I'd have to say that I am like you. I don't usually assume any of the bad things that happen in my life are due to any of my prejudicable qualities. It is late, I'm making up words, but it's even later since we change our clocks ahead this evening. In fact, I don't look at most of the things in my life that some would consider "bad things" as bad at all. Difficult, challenging, interesting, perhaps.

Indeed. I don't want to come across as an irrepressible optimist - because I'm not and frankly, those types are annoying. But I see no reason what other people may or may not think of me should have any consequence on my life. If I ever have been prejudiced against, I've likely just thought it was someone else's problem rather than mine - whether I thought that consciously or by force, I don't know. I mean, yeah, it someone makes a disparaging remark against me, I may get down about it, maybe even for a while, but it doesn't really damage my overall self-worth, and I certainly don't become tortured by it.

This is not saying I want to be.

Um... this posting had a point, but the writer has lost it in thrall of too much caffiene...

"Difficult, challenging, interesting, perhaps."

Yes, I agree (with reference to my own life).

"prejudicable" I like it.

"But I see no reason what
other people may or may not think of me should have any consequence on my life." and the rest of your post:

Amy, keep that attitude, no matter what! You have truth in your hands.

Lady Scotts words:
""whatever their particular "deficiency" might be, they're going to have to fight to keep the mental recordings that tell them they're inadequate/worthless from starting up again."

That is true. The process can get amazingly refined though; becomes quicker & smoother with practice, luck and hand holding. It can be less damaging, lasting for moments rather than days or life long. Sometimes therapy or medication can help people do that. Changing the emphasis and outlook, therefore the outcome.

I was not told what was right about me as a kid, only what was wrong. It was only when I valued the traits that had been previously chastised; being the *different one*, that I came into my own. You come in alone and go out alone; what people do to you in the meantime, is either out of your control or within your control, you put it where it belongs as an adult.

There are people that like you for the right reasons and people that like you for the wrong reasons.

There are people that dislike you for the right reasons and those whom dislike you for the wrong reasons.

I Inspect all --- The only ones to give you serious pause and self reflection are the ones that may dislike you, for the right reason! You can learn and grow the fastest from them.

The others inflate or deflate your esteem according to their standards that may or may not your own. Those opinions are to be taken with a grain of salt or sugar depending on the moment