On Being "Hypersensitive"

[ismnotwasm]

Interesting word. So the last few weeks in GD, and I'm sure other places, we've seen women, gays, overweight folks, breastfeeding (subset of women) and a few more topics where people are accused of being overly sensitive, or "hypersensitive" as one alert poster put it. Feminists get to hear that constant drone in our ears we need to "lighten up"

So bear with me while I tell this story.
I was sitting in the break room, I had recently finished an ACLS course for nursing. I usually bring the materials from any extra classes I take to work to share. A newer nurse turned to me, and said (AND I quote) Oh, did I tell you about the body I found? (Side bar, I know a few nurses post here, and will understand that nursing is one of those professions where you can develop an insane sense of humor, we laugh at just about anything.)

So I started laughing, "Why no, you DIDN'T tell me about the body you found". I said. She started laughing too. And began to tell her story of driving home, seeing a body by the side of the road, with no one near, just a few parked cars. She stopped, and as she was walking toward the body laying at the side of the road she saw that it was small, short, she thought, a child? Did someone loose their legs? Closer and closer. An off duty EMT had pulled up and was approaching the body as well. Together they turned him over, and saw he was still alive, covered with blood and had broken probably every major bone.

"It was a midget" She said. We laughed harder, as though somehow, a midget suffering by the side of the road is FUNNIER than a child, or an adult. It was different, macabre nearly, of course. We laughed even when we knew it wasn't funny because in spite of all efforts, this person didn't make, and this new nurse had an experience most never have outside of the workplace, and hurt over her perceived failure to save a life.

Dead midget. Dead Midget. I could look up the proper term, and I mean the proper term currently acceptable to the community in question, and NOT say I'm being "PC"-- the term people like to use when wanting gain over someone else's expense, but it wouldn't have the comedic effect. Dead dwarf? Still funny? Or just midget without the dead, just the disrespect. Does a Midget think "dead midget" is funny? I seriously, seriously doubt it.

Ok so my point. She needed to talk it out, and we all did, but I got to thinking. Why was it so funny? I thought it out, even though I knew the answer.

For the similar reasons people joke about rape, or spousal abuse or bride buying or overweight women or the sex industry or anything having to do with the reality of women under patriarchy. There is an underlying cruelty, a dehumanization process and a dominant gender system that promotes such cruelty and dehumanization and domination. It's in feminist theory, and other places why we laugh at what we do, but theory doesn't alway touch the real.

Just another thought. Another story. I'll always have a wicked sense of humor-- I know, I'll always laugh at body fluids, and leech therapy, and crazy families and things people do. But I don't want to laugh at what people ARE or how they're treated when they never had a choice.

And I don't think I'm hypersensitive. I don't think I need to lighten up. In no way.

And if anyone is interested, Here's the Little People of America's website;
http://www.lpaonline.org/mc/page.do