Sunday, May 29, 2016

Respect, and who deserves it.

Every now and then, a blog post topic whacks me upside the head. This might be one of those times. (There's a different topic that's been whacking me upside the head, too, for the past several weeks. But I need more time to gather my thoughts on that one. Maybe next week.)

Earlier this week, I think it was, I got into a discussion about political correctness with some of the guys at Kevin's Watch. For those of you just joining us, the Watch began as a message board for fans of fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson, but over the years we have added several forums that have nothing to do with either Donaldson's books or fantasy in general. It's been a big part of my online life for more than 15 years, and it's brought me a ton of real-life friends.

Among the non-fantasy forums is one for political discussion. I'm told the tone in there is mild compared to other political forums on the intarwebz, and I guess I can see that, after having read some of the comments on political stories at various online publications. But still, people have strong opinions, and we've all known each other long enough that folks know where to sink the blade if they're in the right mood.

In any case, as I said, this particular discussion was about political correctness. One of the guys asked how much society should be asked to bend to accommodate transgender individuals, who make up a relatively small percentage of the population. I turned the tables and asked him, if he himself had some rare condition, would he want others to respect him enough to cut him some slack?

That set off another of our regulars, who wanted to know why he had to respect someone whom he disagreed with, or whom he just plain didn't like. Basically, his question was, "If I think you're an idiot, why should I respect you?"

And I responded that I thought everyone deserved respect, by virtue of the fact that we're all human beings.

Then a few days later, along came this meme on Facebook:


And I thought to myself, if Neil Gaiman gets it, that's good enough for me.

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This post is late because I've spent most of the weekend writing like a madwoman. Book 4 of the Legacy series is just under 35,000 words as we speak, and I'm hoping to get another 5,000 on the virtual page tomorrow. With any luck, I'll be able to finish the first draft by the end of next weekend. I won't promise it'll be out by the summer solstice, but I think the 4th of July is doable. And surely by then I'll have settled on a title, don't you think?

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These moments of respectful blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

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