How do you deal with bigoted family members?

Bite your tongue. It's all you can do if you want to keep a good relationship with them. They're not your views, you're allowed to love people and disagree with them, and you're allowed to let unpalatable attitudes go unchallenged without it reflecting badly on you. You don't have to save the world every day.

 

Nominative determinism in full effect

 

Were you playing for Ron Atkinson at Villa or United?

 

He hated football but I didn't hold that one against him.

 

You have to choose your battles, I have boll ocked an aunt and a cousin for racist comments.

but at other times I have ignored comments from other relatives. All depends on your relationship with them, whether you want to maintain it and how it might affect others

no simple answer, my work environment is one where I would have to challenge racist behaviour, but it’d be exhausting to do it everywhere.

 

I think you have to look at the flip side of the coin. In our current climate of everything being offensive to another person, how would you react say in 30 yrs when something we do as a norm today which you find acceptable now is vilified?

There has to be a recognition somewhere of cultural changes, and whether we see things as right or wrong now maybe wasn't the case xx years ago.

Its a difficult balance of tolerance IMO.

Obviously there are those who deliberately go out of their way to spout hate but I think the majority of previous generations just operate within their upbringing and surroundings.

We can never please everyone because being offended is a personal subjective decision.

 

There's levels though aren't there? An elderly relative may use terms that are not considered acceptable anymore but if they are using them without malice then I would still try and gently ask them to use a different word if it was particularly bad or just cringe a little if it was minor but I wouldn't cut them out of my life due to it. If, however, they are clearly being racist then no way would I make allowances for that just because of the time they were brought up. Acting like that towards someone was always wrong whether they realised it or not and even if they had an excuse then, they certainly haven't got one now - it's been many years since opinions like that were deemed acceptable and anyone continuing to hold those beliefs now in the face of how wrong they were is not someone I want to share my life with.

In regards to your second sentence. I've always enjoyed wondering what is going to be classed as horrendous in X amount of years that we are ok with now. I've wondered this since I was young and I think it's becoming clear that stereotyping people by their gender is heading that way.

 

Oh stop being such a girl

 

I enjoyed once when Will brought me an Easter Egg home from Thorntons as o2 were giving away free ones through their app. He came in the house and said 'I've got you a girly one'. I was really surprised he'd said that as he knows I don't really subscribe to all that stuff and was just asking 'what?' in a genuinely confused voice when he gave me the egg and it was a football one . He said 'I know it's girly because you like football and you're a girl'. It made me laugh anyway as he'd proper caught me offguard and was a good 'gotcha' moment.

 

I can just imagine how pleased he was with himself at managing to get you like that. I could almost begin to like him if it wasn't for his baffling inability to like football.

 

He was grinning like a cheshire cat! Yeah... I don't get it either but what can you do? At least he doesn't like rugby either despite coming from a rugby town so there's that I suppose.

 

People aren't always like the place they're from remember. I mean you're from grimethorpe but you've never been in prison.

Does Will like any sport? I get the feeling he's going to be really into some obscure sport

 

Nope. Unless eSports count? (They don’t).