Blogging is a powerful weapon to fight verbal abuse of all kinds. I was so glad to see that Blog Catalog had a campaign on Sept. 27 to fight abuse of all sorts. I am passionate about verbal abuse aimed at ANYBODY. It takes so many ugly forms that it is almost hidden except deep in the memories of those who have been hurt by it.
I developed a mini-site called words can hurt or heal earlier this year. I have also written loads of articles on the topic. There is so much we can say to turn it all around. Can you imagine the impact if just on one day we all wrote words of hope and inspiration?
I am including one of those articles below. I just hope we can all join together to be sensitive about our words and the impact on the listener. What often helps me is to imagine if the same hurtful words I say were said to me in the heat of anger, how do I feel?
Thanks for listening this is an area that I hope every blogging boomer will join me in this campaign.
On Critical Humor
Critical humor
Critical humor hurts. The young husband gently touched his wife’s full figured hips and says “ I guess we’ll be getting a king sized bed real soon. He then chuckles. Sensitive about her new weight gain, she is hurt and replies.” What are you trying to say? Are you making fun of me? He says, “You are over reacting, I was JUST KIDDING’
I laughed as a popular comedian held up a mans eyeglasses from the audience and said,” I think I can see
Critical humor is a put down of the person or their physical or mental weaknesses.
THINK BACK to all the times you have been the victim of criticism disguised as humor. How did it feel? How did you react?
Most of us will attack defensively only to be told that we were over reacting. Then we wonder if we were mistaken. After all, the person had a smile on their face and even laughed. But you still felt like they attacked you so you had to fight back somehow.
I love humor. I think it is healing, restoring and sanity in the midst of craziness. But I am convinced that it should not be used as a sneaky way to insult someone or make the abuser feel powerful. Some use it just to get a laugh.
As children many of us played the DOZENS. If you are not familiar, it was a game where each person traded insults about each other or their family. It was only effective if there was a crowd of observers that could LAUGH at the exchange. Often the person would not get angry until you talked about their mother. Ha!
Well I propose a better game to play for young folks and some adults who still practice the dozens. It’s called the POSITIVE DOZENS.
Each person tries to outdo each other with words of encouragement. There is still room for a lot of humor but the funny thing is that playing the POSITIVE DOZENS does not hurt. I don’t know if your Mama would be happy with that but I know mine would.
Rosie Horner