How do I get past this wall I've put up?
March 29, 2015 10:22 PM   Subscribe

My partner and I have significantly different views on an issue we both feel strongly about. How do I get past it?

For reasons in my past, I refuse to call myself a feminist, but I do consider myself an... equalitist? I work in an industry with a significant gender and race imbalance and I've always worked hard to treat my occasional minions equally. I hate that, no matter how hard I try, my brain still occasionally falls back on (hopefully minor) gender and racial stereotypes. My brother and both parents all work(ed) in fields with levels of sexism and racism high enough that they're comedy tropes, and I hate how accepting they seem to be of this fact. I hate how they all seem so okay with this despite my parents messy divorce being a comedy of errors because every part of the legal system repeatedly dumped lazy sexual stereotypes and biases on all parties, causing much hurt for all.

Then...

I recently had a debate with my partner where I discovered that their opinion was different to mine. Labeling interactions and coming to conclusions about someone based on nothing more than their gender were apparently acceptable. Treating people differently based on gender isn't just unavoidable but actively desirable.

I've often argued deliberately contrary opinions for fun, so this didn't actually upset me. As we left the debate I was less upset and more amused that I'd managed to tie them in a couple of a logical knots.

The problem was when they turned to friends and colleagues on facebook to ask for opinions on this logical knot. The result was me getting told categorically that I was wrong. Wronger than just plain wrong. The only voices were those telling me I was wrong. The majority of people just kept clear.

I have no idea if these people stayed quiet because they didn't want to get involved, because they were wary of the barrage, or if they agreed with it and thought others were doing a good enough job of telling me I was wrong.

I'm normally pretty thick skinned but this knocked me hard. I now can't think of anything else when I think of my partner or anyone on their friends list. I need to get past this because I love them, but I just can't think about anything other than this argument. It's clearly not a subject either of us can be swayed on, and I feel like a wall has been thrown up between us. A wall my hurt and anger is making bigger every day.

How do I learn not to care about their beliefs and knock this wall down before it grows too big?
posted by anonymous to Human Relations

This post was deleted for the following reason: -- taz

 
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