Different definitions of "respect"

April 8, 2016 8:52 AM

I'm looking for a particular quotation about respect that I saw very recently online somewhere. It was something like "When you tell me you want me to respect you, you mean that you want me to acknowledge that you have authority over me. When I tell you I want you to respect me, I mean that I want you to value me."

It was something along those lines. What I'm after with this quote is the demonstration of the different meanings of "respect" for different people. I want to use it in a discussion with parents, where the word respect can mean anything from fear to admiration. Any other quotations addressing this concept are welcome.

posted by ThatCanadianGirl to Human Relations (8 answers total)

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”.

And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”.

And they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

Hope this is something like what you are looking for. Got no attribution, sorry, but I do have it saved.
posted by Sternmeyer at 9:01 AM on April 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

It seems to have originated here on Tumblr, but it can be hard to tell the difference between "made popular by" and "started on" given inconsistency of proper attribution on tumblr.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:06 AM on April 8, 2016

This comment by kliuless might offer some clues to the original source.
posted by mochapickle at 9:29 AM on April 8, 2016

Response by poster: That isn't the particular quote I'm thinking of although it definitely does touch on the general idea I want to examine. More thoughts welcome!
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 9:35 AM on April 8, 2016

I think I saw it recently here on Metafilter, in the context of a conflict between two waiters, I'll try to google it but I remember the name of one of them was Chuck.
posted by M. at 11:26 AM on April 8, 2016

On not-preview, what mochapickle said.
posted by M. at 11:28 AM on April 8, 2016

a similar quote is also buried in a mega thread about state sanctioned violence on black bodies. i'll try to search around for it.
posted by nadawi at 11:45 AM on April 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

What Sternmeyer posted appears to be a direct quote of stimmyabby on Tumblr, as Tomorrowful linked. It does appear to be her post originally. I first saw it in the emotional labor thread, where kliuless also quoted it.

The way I saw it was via kliuless in the emotional labor thread via CarlaSchroder on Twitter via knzconnor on Twitter via this image on Imgur depicting stimmyabby's post on Tumblr.

But I'm not sure what other quotes get at this!
posted by limeonaire at 12:36 PM on April 8, 2016