205
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
205 points (96.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43965 readers
1866 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
This website completely changed the way I thought about this stuff and I found it super helpful.
The line to walk, generally speaking, is, "When you do [specific behavior], it makes me feel [specific emotion]." So for example, "When you ask me if everything's ok, it makes me feel pressured/put on the spot."
Keeping it about your own feelings makes it less confrontational while still bringing attention to the problem - you don't wanna get drawn into a whole debate about whether there's anything wrong with asking if someone's ok, but you want him to understand how you feel and (hopefully) take that into account in the future. If he does get defensive, repeat the message once to make it clear you're standing your ground, but then drop it and move on. A lot of times it's just a matter of the other person not realizing how it affects you.
Having said that, speaking as someone who's very much had the same mentality in the past, there are a lot of advantages to having friends in the workplace. Something to understand about this approach is that it's actually good for building relationships because it allows you to confront the behaviors that bother you while openly communicating your feelings, and people may even respect you more for standing up for yourself. Just remember to walk a middle ground, you don't want to veer into aggression or passivity.
Got it, aiming for passive aggression!
have you ever done this yourself? To me it makes me look weak, giving them something they can use to attack me.
Not that specific example, but I have used that approach before. I think the first time was about 10 years ago. There were a couple queer people in my friend group who would throw around the f-slur, which was whatever, but one night when we were drinking one of my straight friends called me it, and that bothered me. So the next day I sent a group message talking about how it made me feel uncomfortable and I didn't like it being normalized. It was a little awkward, but from then on everyone stopped using it and we all remained friends. In the long term, I think people actually respected me more for standing up for myself (since I was generally more of a pushover), and it stopped a behavior that had been making me uncomfortable and driving a bit of a wedge between us.
Most of the time, stuff like this don't come from malice, but from people having different norms or expectations and not understanding each other. They might get defensive in the moment, but once they're aware of it there's a good chance they'll stop. While people can be dicks, we are fundamentally social creatures and wired to avoid friction.
I will say it's easier to confront people when you have a voluntary relationship with them, because if they're dicks about it you can always just not hang out, but you can't do that with coworkers. If they attack you for expressing how their behavior makes you feel, then you can probably bring it to HR and you'll have a stronger case to say it's malice.