If you... Then I...

If I hear you mock someone for crying over something you believe is trivial. If you tell them to "get some perspective" "others have it much worse than you" "pull yourself together" and I am feeling strong enough, I will confront you. I don't care if you have experienced their situation yourself, or helped a loved one through it. That does not give you the right to belittle someone else's experience. And if you can't see that...

If I hear you use words like retard, spaz, tranny, or gay (meaning anything other than happy or someone's sexuality), I will speak up. Because words DO hurt. Words are powerful. And by using the phrase "I'm sorry if you were offended" you are belittling someone's pain while making yourself feel better, because "I apologised didn't I?" No. You didn't. You put the onus on the person you hurt.

If you honestly wish to apologise, better to say "I am sorry that I/my words/my actions hurt you." This is not saying "I was wrong" if you truly believe in what you said or did, but it is acknowledging that you caused someone else pain. We can't all agree all of the time, but we can acknowledge when we've hurt someone.

In return, I hope that if I ever hurt or offend you, you will do me the service of calling me out on it, with civility. We are all learning, every day, what it takes to develop into the person we want to be. Some of us have a head start because of race, gender, money, education...it doesn't mean we have any less of a journey to make. It does mean that we have benefited at the expense of others, whether we wanted to or not.

...Oh, and when someone apologises, take it at face value. Believe them, at least until they show by their words or actions that they didn't really mean it. Because how do you feel when YOU apologise and are not heard? It happens every time my older son and I don't see eye-to-eye: whichever one of us was not heard forgets why they were sorry and instead gets angry and defensive. And in doing so, makes things worse so that the whole miserable cycle starts again.

Disagreeing with someone does not make either them or you a bad person. Two people can hold completely opposite views and still both be good people. The world is not a simple place, people are complicated, and I kind of like it that way.