#tsunsmi | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

loneliii-aura · 2 years ago

Text

The ability to say no directly, especially to strangers or acquaintances.

Context: my family is from Colombia, but I was born in the United States. Across a lot of Latin American cultures (let's define Latin American as the descendents of people who colonized by that particular blend of Iberian Catholicism, which generally included more forced religious conversion and 'marriage' than what the indigenous people of North America colonized by the British* experienced) that I've been around, it's considered pretty fucking rude to be direct. If someone's doing something that is a problem, you hem and haw and try to make you discomfort known, and the social contact carries forward that the other party should pick up on your discomfort and back off on what they're doing.

A couple of examples: I got to go to Costa Rica as a teenager with a few students from my class. (It wasn't exactly a class trip for legal reasons, but functioned as such.) On the last day we were there, there was a big earthquake--sonewhere, I don't remember where. We were supposed to spend the day at the beach, but our poor tour guide was getting 20 calls a second about removing us. She was hesitating and going "WELL" and trying to think of any and every way possible for this to work, while most of the students were going ??? 'but you aren't saying no? Is it that dangerous if you aren't saying no?' (No, but my feeling was that the mile between our hotel and the beach wasn't going to make a fucking difference, if a tsunsmi's going to hit let's die happy.) Our teacher finally picked up on it and was like 'we cannot and her supervisors are giving her hell pack it in let's go.' And we were corralled back to the hotel.

A more benign example: I'm part of a group that runs talks every month, along with my partner and family of choice. We used to do this out at the Golden Corral. (A cursed location, but not relevant.) They often forgot to keep people out of the room we booked (and we could NOT have randoms coming in on the subjects we were covering), so we needed to get them out. My partner is from New Jersey, one of the most direct cultures in the States, and was relatively polite, but was pretty fucking forward in that they and their three kids needed to vacate the room unless they wanted to hear explicitly about adult topics.

This made me want to curl up and never meet anyone's eyes ever again. I found myself upset with my partner after, even though everything that took place needed to happen for the group, and the staff wasn't on top of things enough to clear people out. I was upset that it hadn't happened the way I would have done it: apologetically acknowledging I was an imposition on that family's meal and trying to lead them to the conclusion. (It should be noted, this style of navigating the world is not very useful for actually getting oneself respected.) These days I'm generally able to look at what my partner does and, despite my cringing, acknowledge that being direct is a good thing, even if I'm not usually capable of it on my own.(Currently writing this at 8 am because my new neighbor is playing music so loudly that not even my white noise machine cranked up is blocking it. I've never had any interaction with them, but here we are. Sigh.)

Theye are exceptions - family is more okay to be direct with, I imagine because it's culturally assumed that you're obligated to be stuck with these people and if you can't be honest with them none of you are going to have a good time. There's a personality archetype of a woman who's extremely forceful in personality in a specific way that I think comes out of a very deliberate reaction to that culture that I've never entirely seen in western culture. (The Glam Kitchen person is an excellent example of that. There's a woman who does parody videos about the Atioqueña(TM) personality, where her husband being any kind of angry or annoyed with her, she gives him a look and/or goes on a tirade, and he's immediately meek and agreeable. To be honest, I associate this personality with being wildly abusive towards huaband and children, but this is probably not a reality, just propaganda/my experience from family.) This isn't "no one says no ever", and I do take it to the other extreme, where I'd rather jump off a bridge if I even think my presence will be an imposition on a stranger trying to get across who needs more room. But it's all personalty influenced by the same core.

What stuff is there that's uniquely a culturally western thing, but which western - here defined to consist of Europe, North America and Oceania* - people seem to think is universal?

Everyone's got blind spots, and you can't taste the inside of your own mouth, and I'd be curious to hear some things from people from different cultural backgrounds. Trying to just google this kind of thing only gets me the personal accounts of Americans telling stories along the line sof "back when I was travelling in [region] I was visiting people and tried to do [american thing] and they were shocked that I would do that! Even though it's completely normal! Isn't that a weird quirk they have?"

And while this is enlightening, I'll read a few and just think "bruh I'm from Finland and if you tried to keep your shoes on while inside someone's goddamn house I'd be weirded out, too."

*as a footnote, I'm also curious about indigenous peoples' observations about things that your own people do/don't do, which the descendants of invaders do differently and regard the same way

#There are dozens of other small things #But this is the one I've given a lot of thought to #Not least because when I'm down there I do come off a little more direct/rude #And my family is also Crazy and full of Direct women who fled to the US to avoid that culture #But also raised me who simultaneously Needs people to be direct so I understand what the fuck it is they want from me #And have the various cultural hang ups around it #But you know what? I prefer this set of neuroses. Thank God I'm not a puritan.

149 notes · View notes