Yesterday, my queer platonic partner went to the grocery store to get a few things we needed. She was wearing her Dentec respirator, as she usually does.
As she was going down an aisle, a woman saw her and complimented her mask. She thanked her - outright mask compliments are rare here in the South US. The woman then fished around in her purse looking for a mask to put on. They bumped into each other later as they were leaving and the woman said that she seemed to have forgotten her mask and that she's trying to get better at wearing one more places. She also offered to help my partner with loading her groceries into the car.
Pause. Reading this, how do you feel about this woman? Annoyed, angry, confused, happy?
My partner was quite happy. One, to get a supportive comment, two, to know there's at least someone in our very conservative community thinking about and trying to mask more, and three, to receive an offer of help from someone who recognized she might have a disability that couldn't be easily seen.
But I've seen others tell similar stories with a lot of annoyance or outright anger. I often see the COVID cautious/Still COVIDing community broach people who don't do as they would from a place of outright hostility.
And this doesn't stop at masking or the other pillars of prevention either. It's ragging on people for ordering takeout at all even when picking it up masked. It's people organizing online events don't use the software you think they should (regardless of whether there's a suitable alternative). It's assuming people have "removed" alt text, rather that it not saving or someone forgetting.
While so many of these are rooted in good concerns, important concerns - the way they're often communicated prioritizes the individual's feelings over actual changed behavior. I'm not telling anyone to settle for bad behavior or even that you have to be happy about it, but I am begging you to at least *start* with some measure of kindness if your genuine intent is change.
It's vital that we perceive other people on the internet as people. Humans make mistakes, don't always have the tools to understand their challenges, are dealing with illness, isolation, and worse.
I guess to put it another way: I'm under no delusions that being kind will always get someone to change in a way they ought to or need to but if, especially on an individual + intracommunity level, you skip being kind and go straight to open hostility - you're an asshole.
Communities generally get more done and stick together longer the less people are assholes in my experience.
Just a thought for those who are open to it.
((Any asshole comments will be deleted and users blocked so you won't be signalling to others, you'll just be trying to hurt me which is a choice you can make))
