There’s the saying you shouldn’t talk about politics or religion at family gatherings, but apparently no one in my family has ever heard of it because whenever we all get in one room we start talking about Israel.
We don’t even disagree but there’s still usually a lot of shouting.
As someone whose favourite pastime is explaining to the world why their (third world, majority-black, ex-colony) country sucks, this is annoying. Why yes, my Canadian classmates, you can admit that the fact that my country has fucking sodomy laws is a bad thing!
*nod*
Not being from a third-world majority-black country myself, I tend to get it from the other direction (one not within the OP’s scope, but it does seem like the other side of the same coin): more-or-less-harmless customs that would be considered totally valid if they were in some other culture, but because they’re ours they’re suddenly worthy of complaint.
(This especially comes up at this time of year. “It’s perfectly fucking valid to have a culture where eating food somebody else prepared is a big expression of trust in that person, not done for just anyone! Stop whining about not being allowed to give kids you barely know homemade treats for Halloween!”)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #last week I went for a walk and changed the path I was planning to take #because my culture has a superstition about walking past cars stopped by the side of the road #with engines running and people inside #I’m willing to believe it is no better than other superstitions #but it is also not *worse* #I’ll also tag this #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #as I suspect I wouldn’t defend that particular custom *as* strongly if it didn’t align with my natural paranoia #still a legitimate custom though
Brinens and Things 