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Interblog wrote:I would be surprised if there was a person out there who couldn't claim a stereotyping story of some sort. I have very short salt-and-pepper hair which I cannot and will not dye (lap swimmer), and I don't wear make-up, do my nails, or wear heels. Occasionally I get addressed in a disrespectful way because the speaker assumes I am a lesbian when in fact I'm a married heterosexual woman. My husband wears his "garage" clothes to the hardware store and occasionally gets treated like PWT who maybe crawled in the door to steal something. It never ends.

Although my wife does wear understated makeup, she also keeps her hair short, and it is graying quite a bit; and she favors what used to be called “sporty” clothes back in the 1930s.......picture Amelia Earhart or someone like that. Although I am unaware of anyone being rude to her on that account, I know that she sometimes worries that people might think that of her. OTH, she has nothing to prove to anyone, and she doesn’t worry about it that much. It just comes up once in a while. I wouldn’t have her any other way, and I’ve personally never been attracted to foo-foo women, so it is a non-issue for us. But I do understand what you are saying, and when people have disrespected you that way, it’s just one more example of someone who lacks self control. And by the way, even if someone were a lesbian, it would make no difference to me in how I treated that person. When someone is an ass, I can always walk away if I want to - unless it really demands a response.

ninjabread wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:I would NOT go so far as to say that open carry is an “in your face” type of provocation. It’s your right under the law if you have an LTC, and lots of perfectly normal decent people open carry with regularity. I myself open carry on occasion. However, even though I do not view open carry as an “in your face” provocation, I’m not stupid enough to deny that there are some people who WILL find it a provocation requiring a response - even though they are in the wrong about that - and those people are going to be the kind who very little self-control, and are a little bit off balance psychologically and emotionally. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but if it ever does, and I am confronted by someone who is freaking out about my OCing, I’ll probably behave exactly as the subject of this thread behaved, except that I would ALSO tell the person to mind their own business, that I am violating no laws, BUT THEY ARE IF THEY CONTINUE TO HARASS ME!!!

Was the subject of this thread approached by the crazy woman or was her first reaction to call the police to complain that somebody had an opinion she didn't like?

Sorry..... I didn’t see your question until just now. No, he was not directly approached by her....but he WAS directly approached by people who were themselves directly approached by her. As I understand it, that’s how he received the warning that the police had been called. So I assume that you would like a clarification on my part for what I posted above:

1. If I were indirectly approached through the agency of third parties - as happened to the subject of the OP - I would most likely behave exactly as he did.
2. If were directly approached as I previously hypothesized, then I would react exactly as I previously said I would......and then I would calmly wait for the police, just as the subject did.

I’m not into confrontation per se, but I also refuse to be chased from a locale by someone who is being a jerk, when I have every right to be there, and when the jerk’s behavior is not particularly threatening. I don’t view all acts of idiocy as necessarily dangerous. I also think that it is quite possible to verbally (and politely) warn someone that it is their behavior that is unlawful, without actually escalating the situation. It all depends on just how insistently intrusive the other person is behaving. If it were possible to studiously ignore the other person, I would do that too. I have no desire to have a confrontation, and if the situation looked like it might escalate into violence, I would most likely leave before things got to that point. But in the case of a fraudulent busybody who is trying to get everyone riled up in a public park, it seems to me that the best thing I could do would be to remain in place, remain calm, and by virtue of my actions (or lack thereof) demonstrate to all the witnesses that I am not the problem.....the other person is the problem. And in fact, that seems to be exactly what happened in the topic of this thread.

Although I am an Endowment Life Member of the NRA, I don’t own any NRA logoed apparel; and the gun-related logoed apparel I do own tends to be limited to baseball hats that were included with other purchases I’ve made. Also, those are logos that are not likely to be recognized by anyone who is not of the gun world. I have hats from BCM, Odin Works, Vortex, and LaRue Tactical. The only gun-related T-shirt I own is a “stamp collector” shirt that might not even be recognized for what it is by a lot of people IN the gun world.

MechAg94 wrote:

Interblog wrote:
Johnston admitted to self-awareness of his own provocation. He was quoted in the news article as such.

Each one of us must claim a healthy degree of ownership in the reactions that we elicit from others. There's another active thread on here titled "Is Deviancy the New Norm?" That thread's OP states, "If you look, act, appear to be a clown of some sort, I'm not going to go along and pretend seeing you and your infantile behavior as normal. I will not ignore you. I'll laugh and afford you zero credibility as a fellow human being." That is an example of what I'm talking about. No doubt many "clowns" consider themselves to be "just going about their business". But they do play a role in how they are perceived. Like it or not, that effect of perception is simple human nature.

And a great deal rests in the eye of the beholder. Soccerdad rebutted the general disavowal of responsibility for this effect far more persuasively than I could have, and using much milder examples.

Being aware of people's reaction and intentionally provoking a reaction are two completely different things. You are making the assumption that he is a troublemaker going out of his way to bait anti-gun people. I don't think we can assume that solely from that one quoted sentence.

I think...... and the skimpy skirt analogy is actually right on..... that if one has knowledge that their clothes are going to have a certain effect on some people, they ought not be surprised when they are confronted with that effect. Please understand that I am NOT saying that the reaction is necessarily justified, but human nature is what it is, and some people are jerks. That doesn’t give a jerk the right to act out their jerkiness, but the subject ought not to be naive enough to believe that their provocative choices exist in a vacuum.

Now, I personally have strongly held religious and moral reasons for why I believe that skimpy dresses are a bad idea; but that gives me no right to abuse the person wearing a skimpy dress. “Abuse” includes placing the other person at risk in some way, calling the cops on them for instance, simply because I disapprove of their sartorial choices. In my own case, the other person in the skimpy skirt would have no idea about my disapproval, because I don’t act on impulses like that. It’s called having control over one’s self. Even so, there are LOTS of people who have no such self control; and while it is NOT their right to pester a woman in a skimpy skirt, it would certainly be stupid of her to not understand that her clothing might have that effect on some people. After all, why even wear the stupid thing, if the goal wasn’t to expose more of your skin to public view???? There are plenty of other clothing choices that preserve one’s modesty in hot and muggy climates, without putting your goods on display. So, the only rational conclusion is that the goal was to put one’s goods on display. And when one puts one’s goods on display, one is an idiot if one thinks that will happen in a vacuum, and that people who lack self-restraint won’t act on their impulses to be jerks. Again, that doesn’t excuse them for being jerks, but it doesn’t reflect well on the intellect of the subject who acts as if they are totally surprised that jerks were jerks.

In the case of the gentleman who is the subject of this thread, he (A) indicates a complete understanding that some will find the shirt provocative, (B) is not surprised by the fact that the idiot woman did what she did, (C) carried himself well when the police showed up, and (D) makes a public statement that it is important for him to speak about the preservation of his rights, and that t-shirt was one such manner of speech.

I would NOT go so far as to say that open carry is an “in your face” type of provocation. It’s your right under the law if you have an LTC, and lots of perfectly normal decent people open carry with regularity. I myself open carry on occasion. However, even though I do not view open carry as an “in your face” provocation, I’m not stupid enough to deny that there are some people who WILL find it a provocation requiring a response - even though they are in the wrong about that - and those people are going to be the kind who very little self-control, and are a little bit off balance psychologically and emotionally. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but if it ever does, and I am confronted by someone who is freaking out about my OCing, I’ll probably behave exactly as the subject of this thread behaved, except that I would ALSO tell the person to mind their own business, that I am violating no laws, BUT THEY ARE IF THEY CONTINUE TO HARASS ME!!!