(no subject)
Jan. 14th, 2003 01:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robbat2Ok, so I get on a Millenium line SkyTrain at Columbia, around 11.40pm Monday night. There are two other people in the car, a middle-aged asian female at one end, and a middle-aged male caucasian, seemingly white collar worker on the other. I'm sitting in the middle, minding my own business, reading a novel, absent-mindedly picking my nose and eating it like I do sometimes.
Just as that car comes into Sapperton station, the male stands up, moves toward the door and starts ranting at me about "how utterly disgusting picking my nose and eating it in a public place is". I tell him it is my right to do what I want, as it isn't doing anything to him. He responds with, "Fuck you man! FUCK YOU!" and gives me the finger. I return the gesture as he gets off the train which has now pulled into the station.
I believe I am right. If you find my personal behaviors off-putting, then don't look at me. I certianly didn't ask you to look at me, let alone criticize my behavior.
I don't do it in crowded place as it does make some people directly around me distinctly uncomfortable, but that is mainly because of the bio-hazardous nature of the material on my finger before I eat it.
Just as that car comes into Sapperton station, the male stands up, moves toward the door and starts ranting at me about "how utterly disgusting picking my nose and eating it in a public place is". I tell him it is my right to do what I want, as it isn't doing anything to him. He responds with, "Fuck you man! FUCK YOU!" and gives me the finger. I return the gesture as he gets off the train which has now pulled into the station.
I believe I am right. If you find my personal behaviors off-putting, then don't look at me. I certianly didn't ask you to look at me, let alone criticize my behavior.
I don't do it in crowded place as it does make some people directly around me distinctly uncomfortable, but that is mainly because of the bio-hazardous nature of the material on my finger before I eat it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
awww *huggies*
*hugs* just trying changing in a girls change room and being bugged for being naked for a decade.
Of course you're right honey! When that thing with you and me and those smokers on the bus happened, I was trying to figure out if I was any more justified in relatiating against them then, say, this dude is for you and picking your nose.
I decided smoking is worse, because it's effecting the air quaility, and my lung's health.
Whereas if you don't want to look, don't look, and as we're not flinging it at you, it's not going to do any damage.
*hugs* sorry this happened to you.
Wish you'd told me before you went to bed, so we could talk.
But that sometimes happens to me too, I ignore it.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-14 11:54 am (UTC)damn hilarious
Date: 2003-01-14 12:16 pm (UTC)love the adventures
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-14 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-14 06:32 pm (UTC)For whatever reason, picking the nose is taboo. Why is not important. The rationality of this is not important. The lack of physical effect on other people is not important. It just is. I think you can agree with that. Just accept this and you'll follow.
If something is taboo, then people consider it, in this american culture of ours, impolite to do it. A female taking off her shirt on the bus is neither illegal nor hurtful to anyone else, but it is taboo. Even if you had a good reason to do it, for example if you were hot even in just your t-shirt, you wouldn't do it, for no other reason than out of respect, courtesy and politeness for others. It can be argued, "but there's no physical damage, and if people have a problem with it, they should just look away". But living by that policy all the time is ridiculous. It's based on the principle that your minor discomfort of hotness, even if equal to or greater than the discomfort of others at having to see this/turn away, is more important. It says "I'll do what I want, when I want, so long as it's not physically hurting or damaging anyone." He has just as much right to yell at you for making you uncomfortable as you have to pick your nose on a bus. You don't consider him, he needn't consider you. And for every guy it makes mad enough to yell, there are ten more behind him who are too uncomfortable to say anything.
And it's true, it's probably not hurtful or damaging, long run or short run. And it probably is their problem throughout life for not minding their own business and being prudish and therefore exposing themselves to unnecessary anguish. And you absent-mindedly picking your nose on the bus certainly wasn't with the intention of causing anyone any negative anything. But their feelings, justified or not, do exist, and are personal and a matter of opinion and therefore you have no right to judge them. Doing it involves consideration of no one but yourself. Personally, I don't care who's picking whose nose on a bus or anywhere else, but the fact is, if you do it, you're at the mercy of the world's traditions, not yours or mine, and breaking them will carry consequences whether you agree with them or not.
Just trying to explain.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-14 10:54 pm (UTC)haha you fellow nose-picker ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-15 12:54 am (UTC)Does it taste good?
*Christine
Sorry, Tara
However, the mentality that something has always been taboo, because it is, so go with it negates the change and growth in a society.
Robin thinks that movie stars' new trend will be to pick their nose. Someday who has the biggest booger may be a status symbol, why is that any more or less arbuitrary than who has the thinest, highest heeled shoe?
It's only those people who dare to defy the status quo that get things moving, who become what we eventually call heros. It was taboo for a black woman to sit near the front of the bus, and to not make room for a white man. Rosa Parks said, "To fuck with that!"
Next summer, I'll ride with you around downtown on a public bus without our shirts, and if anyone looks or coments, we'll tell them we're hot. Or swim topless.
And I don't have a right to do whatever I damn well please, there are laws that govern a society, but in some cases whether or not what I'm doing is infringing on other people's rights. Do I have a right to make out with Robin in public? Do I have a right to smoke on a bus, where I'm affecting people's air quality? Do I have a right to pick crud out of my hair? To tap my fingernails in a repetively annoying way? Why is picking my nose and eating it a different catigory? Viva la snoze revolution!