crysthewolf

mycybertuffet Had this to say to the gossip post, and it struck me as spot-on:

several months back, I left the following comment in response to this (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/09/03/gossip/index.html)
rather idiotic article:

Baby with the bathwater

I agree that discussing other people can help us feel connected with others. It can also serve as a vital way of checking our own perceptions about the world. Not only that, it can have benefits similar to those of discussing a rather abstruse poem in a classroom setting -- chewing over the behavior and motivations of other people with trusted friends often yields rich insights we might otherwise never have come by. As a result, we often understand ourselves better, and can connect to the people we are discussing more easily.

Gossip, however, is very different. It's about closing yourself off to others, rather than connecting with them. You might argue that you bond with other people through gossip ... but how often do you then turn around and gossip about those very people? It's a way to make yourself an island, an island of superiority. It's a way of closing yourself off to humanity by refusing to see others as human beings, each with their own unique combination of life experiences, strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and ways of inhabiting and perceiving the world around them. You reject anything that doesn't fit into your own predetermined notions of what's acceptable and what is not. Instead of expanding your worldview, you're deliberately narrowing it.

Yes, it's okay to be fascinated by human behavior. It's okay to be frustrated with people, and it can be very important to vent to those we trust. It's even okay to engage in a little vindictive schadenfreude from time to time. It reaches a point of not-okayness when you cease to treat the people about whom you're speaking as anything but fodder for your own amusement - when you strip them of their humanity. Case in point: Larry Craig. Many of us are finding this whole affair to be rather ... satisfying. Because he hurt people, and symbolizes a large segment of society that continues to hurt people. But we don't have to be complete and utter assholes about it. We can recognize the agony that his family must be going through. We can try and understand the fractured psyche that does these sorts of things to itself. And we can understand that there but for the grace of God go we. Always.

There's a difference between curiosity (or even anger) and viciousness. That difference consists of one thing, present in the former but absent in the latter: respect.

Everybody deserves respect. Everybody deserves to be treated with dignity. We're opposed to physical torture because it robs others of these things. But all too often, the way we talk about others reduces people to meaningless pieces of matter who happen to amuse us, just as torture does. That it's happening in our minds and not to those people's bodies is immaterial -- it still speaks volumes about how we perceive other people. You're still demonstrating the same basic lack of respect for humanity that torturers do.

My response (not nearly so brilliant) was:

*NOD NOD NOD NOD*

And I think that the author of the article made quite the strawman, to be honest. She defined "gossip" far too broadly, and then decided to cut it out of her diet completely... which makes me wonder if she didn't do it on purpose, so that she could say "NOT gossipping is worse". What she was doing was not cutting gossip, but building a fence around her own conversations to hold EVERYTHING in.. maybe even in a subconscious effort to justify it.

I think you're right... I think that respect is most likely key. There are a lot of other factors that probably make gossip gossip... but if I had to chose one that it would live or die without... I think that respect would DEFINITELY be it.

The fact of the matter is, airing out someone else's personal business is quite often demeaning in and of itself. Maybe they didn't want that to get out? Maybe they wanted to tell people themselves?? There are very few circumstances under which it's helpful.

However. We can also be pretty legalistic about those things... and I've yet to find any good in legalism. This is why I'm not, so to speak, a "woman of principle"... to erect a principle and then allow it to determine every decision that you make is helpful in some situations and terribly destructive in others. Best to take each situation for what it is, and make your decisions when you get there.

Same is true, I think, for how you define gossip. Where you draw the line between "bad-mouthing people" and "sharing information".

But yes, I think that Elana hit the nail on the head, most definitely. The question is one of respect. If you are saying what you're saying with a lack of respect for the person you're speaking of... that would strike me as gossip. Or, perhaps better put...it's simply disrespectful.

And we need to recognize that the people in our world have just as much worth as we do. *shrug*

Love,
Crystal