Harassment

Several years ago, I ran into a problem that I'd been fortunate to never experience until then: harassment.

The thing about harassment is you want to argue with the person. Their treatment of you angers you, and they fully give into their own emotions in their interactions with you. You want to sling back the arrows at them, give as good as you get, grab them by the scruff of the neck and rub their ignorant face into the gravelly truth of How To Interact With Humans.

Maybe that would work, for a moment; maybe they'd realize that they neither have nor deserve a monopoly on rights and emotions. But I doubt it.

In fact, maybe they know this. Maybe they feel that by hurling abuse at you, it will provoke you into being extra accommodating or deferential, to prove to them that you are not those offensive things that they describe you as.

Or maybe they don't realize they're being harassing at all.

That knee-jerk simpering reaction is certainly how I responded to the first few incidents. But concede one inch and you know exactly what they'll take before long. Pretty soon you owe them one for some hazy, made-up non-reason, just because you gave them one before.

It's a hell of a mistake to have to learn from, and it doesn't make your inner reaction any easier.