Being kind

[Minerva1234]

The idea of 'kindness' seems to have taken a sinister turn recently.

Why does 'being kind' require one set of people to overwrite their perception of reality in deference to another set of people?

What determines which of the two groups is expected to 'be kind' and which group expects kindness from others?

Where does it all end? If someone who is five foot two believes they are six foot six, does 'kindness' compel me to agree with them? Why should kindness trump reality?

I'm kind to people until they start taking the piss.

Then I'm no longer kind.

I don't care whether someone then tried to manipulate me by saying I'm not being kind. If you want my kindness, you have to earn it.

I've got further by implementing boundaries and saying 'no' to the pisstakers than I ever did by being blindly kind.

Its just another form of manipulation.

Yes this special type of one-way kindness. It makes me so angry. The kindness that allows male bodies boys to beat girls at running in girl's races because of the need to be kind to boys feelings, but where the boy don;t have to care about the unfairness to the girls or the girl's feelings.

Where when you have a distressed male trans person and an equally distressed female woman who does not want to share her space with the male, only the woman has to be kind and give in.

Kindness is perverted to mean lying, enabling, colluding, being meek, demure, docile, unthinking, unquestioning, subservient, having no boundaries, self-sacrificing to the point of self-harming. Turning the other cheek only to get punched again. This type of kindness = stupid, verging on the suicidal.

But being truly kind can mean telling and accepting painful truths, helping to face up to painful feelings. Thinking of the long term not the short term. Telling the truth is kind because no one can successfully hide from reality without creating a impossible TrumanShow-like bubble and compelling people to lie to protect your attempts at denial. And even then, the truth is still there inside your head and cannot be escaped.

Bloody hell.

Yes, we can be kind, but not nice.

Nice is so reminiscent of women being decorative and pleasing company, not showing how we really feel, and all things being just nice, so fake. Like Potemkin villages. Like how we were 'all in it together'. Superficial, false, doctored, a facade. Nice doesn't care about truth or truthful feelings.

It means
"Be kind...but only to these people. The others are not deserving of consideration, let alone kindness"

And the people who are performing 'kindness' and instructing others to do the same are simply performing what they believe they must to avoid punishment.

They are no more cognisant of ethical decision making than a trained Labrador. They're simply doing what they know is expected of them.

Honestly, when I first started following gender ideology stuff on Twitter I wondered why gender critical women couldn't be kinder. Then I got so, so sick of the nasty, obtuse, dogmatic, manipulative, misogynistic, dishonest and actually totally batshit TRA arguments and actions, and the reflexive lack of support for gender critical women from the supposed liberal left (borne, in my opinion, of sexism and ageism) that I realised kind/ nice/ compromise/ and frank self abnegation are obviously supposed to be a one way street. So now I am a little bit in love with the same 'unkind' ladies. I've had a bit of a debate with my husband about this, as I think he imagines for things to have gotten so heated it must have been six of one and half a dozen of the other, rather than a massively uneven playing field.

How about being kind to ourselves and not letting our boundaries be crossed.

I hate the kind argument it’s so sexist and used to guilt trip

I may have to rethink my username. I believe I've always been a kind person, but also unfortunately that's been slathered with a huge dollop of "niceness." In lots of respects it's got me nowhere, and has actually been harmful. I'm still kind, and pleasant, but I'm working on squashing the "niceness."

I'm teaching my daughter a very different approach. She's already a junior member of the no fucks being given brigade. It's amazing to see.

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell, and I don't have time
To go 'round and 'round and 'round

The Dixie Chicks- always get this as an earworm.

Perhaps we should ask people to be kind and respect single-sex spaces/services/provisions. As we all know, a male-bodied person using the opposite sex spaces, even if they are not actually going to assault, harass or even so much as leer, could cause discomfort, humiliation and fear for lot of female people. The kind thing to do would be to use the facilities for your own sex.

I wonder how far that will get us. I am sure the trans activists would be very quick to point out that when asserting your rights, kindness doesn't come into it (and trans rights are more important than women's rights).

This discussion makes me think of this

'Be kind' has generally been considered to be more-or-less equivalent to 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. Unfortunately, if your neighbour is evil, they will walk all over you, yet you still need to 'love' them.

I prefer a different equivalent: 'That which is hateful to you, do not do unto others'.