The Gendered Stigma of Setting Boundaries
Mar. 1st, 2020 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingMy philosophy in life is to be kind and polite to someone until they prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they’re not worth my time, at which point I stop interacting with them.
This is not like flicking off a switch. Obviously I try to use both words and social cues to suggest to someone that I’m having trouble with their behavior. I understand that it’s difficult for some people to pick up on things like this, so I try to be as open and literal as possible. I’m also willing to let small things slide and give people as many chances as they need as long as they’re not hurting anyone.
Sometimes it is like flicking off a switch, though. For example, late in 2018 I got a series of anonymous messages on Tumblr telling me I should get a lobotomy. I blocked the IP address, and I was very surprised when the account associated with that IP address turned out to belong to someone I was friendly with in grad school. This wasn’t entirely out of character for them, so I quietly blocked them on other social media platforms as well. I didn’t say anything to anyone, and I feel like I don’t owe anyone an explanation for this decision, which is entirely reasonable: If someone sends you multiple death threats, you block them.
I was recently reading about trauma responses, and I was surprised to find that “borderline personality disorder” is considered to be a common effect of having experienced trauma, especially in the way that trauma victims may tend to flip between treating someone nicely and then refusing to speak with them at all.
To begin with, it’s extremely problematic to say that trauma, or any sort of psychological response to trauma, is a fundamental component of someone’s personality. It should go without saying that people are not defined by the shitty things that happen to them. Like, the fact that you’ve probably caught a cold at some point in your life does not mean that you are now and forever “a diseased and disordered person” because you spent a few days in bed sleeping in between bouts of coughing and leaking snot.
More to the point, I’m not sure that “borderline personality disorder” is a real thing (and I say that after having read extensively on the subject, so don’t “well, actually” at me). To me, a lot of the behaviors associated with the “disorder” do in fact seem like common trauma responses and not actual aspects of the core personality of anyone who isn’t a complete sociopath. More specially, the sort of “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil” in someone’s treatment of other people seems a lot like the outside view of someone whose interests lie in solving a “problem” quickly by blaming the victim instead of getting the full story and taking more difficult but meaningful action.
To give a recent example, if I repeatedly tell someone that I’m uncomfortable with being addressed in highly gendered language such as “my dear” and “darling,” and they refuse to listen to or respect my wishes, then I will eventually reach a point at which I will no longer interact with them. Again, this is not about “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil”; it’s about setting boundaries and having enough self-respect that you’re not willing to diminish your own self-worth in order to accommodate the selfish and antisocial behavior of assholes.
To give an even more obvious example, I refuse to associate with someone who thinks it’s okay to anonymously tell me (or anyone else) to get a lobotomy or to commit suicide. This is not about “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil”; it’s about setting normal and reasonable boundaries.
In both cases, the problem is not with me for “suddenly” treating someone as if they’ve done something unforgivable. Rather, the problem is the refusal of the person I cut contact with to respect my boundaries and treat me like a human being. To put this in concrete terms, the problem that needs to be addressed is not me blocking someone on Facebook; the problem is the behavior of the person assuming they can dictate my identity or the actions of the person who went of their way to find and follow me on another social media platform for the sole purpose of anonymously telling me to kill myself.
I understand that “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil” can in fact be something that a person does, especially teenagers and other young people, who tend to experience emotions more strongly and without a broader experiential frame of reference – and especially young women, who are more likely to have their testimonies ignored and to be denied healthy outlets for their frustration. Still, this “symptom” seems more of a reflection of the tendency of authority figures to try to find fault with the victim of trauma instead of the perpetrator, as the victim is clearly upset and suffering while the person who caused the trauma in the first place is usually in a position of relative power and more seemingly “normal.”
It therefore doesn’t surprise me in the least that people diagnosed with “borderline personality disorder” are overwhelmingly female.
If nothing else, in the case of setting boundaries, I think it’s probably fair to acknowledge that it’s an obvious case of double standards when a man who sets boundaries by refusing to associate with offensive and disgusting people is lauded as having “strength of character,” while a woman who sets boundaries is diagnosed with “a personality disorder.”
This is not like flicking off a switch. Obviously I try to use both words and social cues to suggest to someone that I’m having trouble with their behavior. I understand that it’s difficult for some people to pick up on things like this, so I try to be as open and literal as possible. I’m also willing to let small things slide and give people as many chances as they need as long as they’re not hurting anyone.
Sometimes it is like flicking off a switch, though. For example, late in 2018 I got a series of anonymous messages on Tumblr telling me I should get a lobotomy. I blocked the IP address, and I was very surprised when the account associated with that IP address turned out to belong to someone I was friendly with in grad school. This wasn’t entirely out of character for them, so I quietly blocked them on other social media platforms as well. I didn’t say anything to anyone, and I feel like I don’t owe anyone an explanation for this decision, which is entirely reasonable: If someone sends you multiple death threats, you block them.
I was recently reading about trauma responses, and I was surprised to find that “borderline personality disorder” is considered to be a common effect of having experienced trauma, especially in the way that trauma victims may tend to flip between treating someone nicely and then refusing to speak with them at all.
To begin with, it’s extremely problematic to say that trauma, or any sort of psychological response to trauma, is a fundamental component of someone’s personality. It should go without saying that people are not defined by the shitty things that happen to them. Like, the fact that you’ve probably caught a cold at some point in your life does not mean that you are now and forever “a diseased and disordered person” because you spent a few days in bed sleeping in between bouts of coughing and leaking snot.
More to the point, I’m not sure that “borderline personality disorder” is a real thing (and I say that after having read extensively on the subject, so don’t “well, actually” at me). To me, a lot of the behaviors associated with the “disorder” do in fact seem like common trauma responses and not actual aspects of the core personality of anyone who isn’t a complete sociopath. More specially, the sort of “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil” in someone’s treatment of other people seems a lot like the outside view of someone whose interests lie in solving a “problem” quickly by blaming the victim instead of getting the full story and taking more difficult but meaningful action.
To give a recent example, if I repeatedly tell someone that I’m uncomfortable with being addressed in highly gendered language such as “my dear” and “darling,” and they refuse to listen to or respect my wishes, then I will eventually reach a point at which I will no longer interact with them. Again, this is not about “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil”; it’s about setting boundaries and having enough self-respect that you’re not willing to diminish your own self-worth in order to accommodate the selfish and antisocial behavior of assholes.
To give an even more obvious example, I refuse to associate with someone who thinks it’s okay to anonymously tell me (or anyone else) to get a lobotomy or to commit suicide. This is not about “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil”; it’s about setting normal and reasonable boundaries.
In both cases, the problem is not with me for “suddenly” treating someone as if they’ve done something unforgivable. Rather, the problem is the refusal of the person I cut contact with to respect my boundaries and treat me like a human being. To put this in concrete terms, the problem that needs to be addressed is not me blocking someone on Facebook; the problem is the behavior of the person assuming they can dictate my identity or the actions of the person who went of their way to find and follow me on another social media platform for the sole purpose of anonymously telling me to kill myself.
I understand that “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil” can in fact be something that a person does, especially teenagers and other young people, who tend to experience emotions more strongly and without a broader experiential frame of reference – and especially young women, who are more likely to have their testimonies ignored and to be denied healthy outlets for their frustration. Still, this “symptom” seems more of a reflection of the tendency of authority figures to try to find fault with the victim of trauma instead of the perpetrator, as the victim is clearly upset and suffering while the person who caused the trauma in the first place is usually in a position of relative power and more seemingly “normal.”
It therefore doesn’t surprise me in the least that people diagnosed with “borderline personality disorder” are overwhelmingly female.
If nothing else, in the case of setting boundaries, I think it’s probably fair to acknowledge that it’s an obvious case of double standards when a man who sets boundaries by refusing to associate with offensive and disgusting people is lauded as having “strength of character,” while a woman who sets boundaries is diagnosed with “a personality disorder.”
