On being a good judge of character
May. 19th, 2017 09:43 amA few entries ago, I mentioned someone who's recently joined our fencing club and thinks he's the dog's bollocks but who had already started to annoy me because of that and the way he has of butting in on other people's conversations. I'd already decided he was a bit of an arsehole and last night he confirmed that decision, so my arsehole-detecting powers are still good.
There tends to be a bit of an overlap between us older beginners arriving and the end of the junior lessons, so there's often a bit of chat while we wait for the whirlwind of small children divesting themselves of fencing kit to subside enough for us to get into the hall without being mown down. Somehow the conversation between me and S got onto martial arts movies and he made a comment about how he liked Chinese martial arts better because Japanese ones were for [insert homophobic slur here]. It's been longer than S has been alive since I've tolerated that kind of comment and I bluntly told him I didn't want to hear that kind of language.
Naturally, he then doubles down (because what young white guy likes to be told anything?) and starts going on about how it's just 'banter'. Which I then promptly told him was just so much bullshit, that he needed to not make assumptions about the people around him or that anyone around us agreed with him and his comments and that the concept of 'banter' was just about trying to get away with being offensive with no consequences. Equally naturally, the whole 'oh, I'm not PC' came in there, which I informed him was just shorthand for 'I don't care about other people and their feelings so long as I can say what I want'.
Gah. That whole 'oh, it's just banter' is just so much crap. That was probably the worst response he could have made, though I doubt he's got sufficient insight to see anything beyond how much he loves himself.
There tends to be a bit of an overlap between us older beginners arriving and the end of the junior lessons, so there's often a bit of chat while we wait for the whirlwind of small children divesting themselves of fencing kit to subside enough for us to get into the hall without being mown down. Somehow the conversation between me and S got onto martial arts movies and he made a comment about how he liked Chinese martial arts better because Japanese ones were for [insert homophobic slur here]. It's been longer than S has been alive since I've tolerated that kind of comment and I bluntly told him I didn't want to hear that kind of language.
Naturally, he then doubles down (because what young white guy likes to be told anything?) and starts going on about how it's just 'banter'. Which I then promptly told him was just so much bullshit, that he needed to not make assumptions about the people around him or that anyone around us agreed with him and his comments and that the concept of 'banter' was just about trying to get away with being offensive with no consequences. Equally naturally, the whole 'oh, I'm not PC' came in there, which I informed him was just shorthand for 'I don't care about other people and their feelings so long as I can say what I want'.
Gah. That whole 'oh, it's just banter' is just so much crap. That was probably the worst response he could have made, though I doubt he's got sufficient insight to see anything beyond how much he loves himself.
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