vijayjohn wrote:księżycowy wrote:If you think I was antagonizing you, you misunderstood my point.
Not at all. I understand exactly what your point was and still is.
To put what I have to say out there:
I think you were very insensitive and discriminatory towards my faith and religious beliefs in our argument some months ago.
This was directly in response to
you being very insensitive and discriminatory towards
all faiths, religious beliefs, and races other than your own. The whole point of what I said was precisely to show you how insensitive and discriminatory your own words at that exact same time were.
Which to a degree I can understand, because I don't think you have the same attachment to them that I do.
It has nothing at all to do with what I think about your religion. While I don't
share your beliefs, I have no actual problem with your religion whatsoever. But I do have a problem with the Roman Catholic Church because it almost certainly subjected my ancestors to the Inquisition even though they were very likely Christian before the Catholic Church existed and possibly before any Europeans had even heard of Christianity. Expecting me to be sympathetic to your concerns regarding membership in a church that persecuted my family is, quite frankly, unreasonable.
But this does not excuse calling them "whining" . Regardless of how anyone else understands them. Because it's what I'm talking about, it has to be understood (as best as another can) through my lens. I don't get a right to call your issues "whining", and the same for you about mine.
When you repeatedly call me such names as "heretic," "brown devil," and "brown bitch"; when you constantly,
constantly make racist jokes; when you fetishize women based on what country they are from; when you make homophobic remarks about me; when you
even apologized for getting so upset about the only other flippant remark I ever made regarding your religion, and then, all of a sudden, you get so angry about one flippant remark about your religion that you confront me about it before I've even woken up and then continue to do so in increasingly public venues, yes, I do get to call it "whining."
Of course I understand I'm the boogie man for you now. Or so it seems.
You're not "the boogie man." You're a person who I used to consider a friend - one of my best friends even - and who I translated things for, recorded things for, provided book reviews for - however reluctantly and at your very stubborn insistence - and helped learn various languages, all 100% for free. I don't ask for much in exchange, but I absolutely insist that you respect the right of my family and myself to exist, regardless of whether I am doing anything for you or not.
When you insist, as you do now, on blaming
me for ending our friendship; you continually make racist and sexist remarks; and on top of that, you have the nerve to compare my fears regarding my two-year-old niece being shot on account of her skin color, in a country where even the police have done something very similar, to your fears about
dwindling church membership, you do not respect our right to exist. This is not the 19
th century; no one in the United States of America is going to take one look at you and know you are Catholic, let alone shoot you because you are. This is the 21
st century, when people in the United States of America of my ethnicity have repeatedly been targeted and murdered on the basis of nothing more than their skin color.
Your ignorance is not my responsibility. I'm not the one who's responsible for informing you about the various aspects of racism, sexism, and homophobia in society today. There is literature on these things from all over the world dating back hundreds of years. There are people still talking about these things today for all to see for free. Educating yourself on these issues is
your responsibility and yours alone, yet I have seen over the years that you are not actually taking that responsibility. And you wonder why I'm not friends with you anymore?
That's why I'm not friends with you anymore. As long as you insist on retaining the luxury to remain ignorant of these issues when there is no physical danger to your life as there is to mine, I will never make the mistake of being friends with you again