Inappropriate things

[ThorLyonsSalem]

A few weeks ago, the arts organization of which I am on the board of had auditions for the next production (The Little Mermaid).  I went to the first audition and met a few of the new people coming in for primary / secondary roles as well as those who will be in the ensemble.  I ran into a guy who I had met on Facebook at one point, he and I had met once or twice in the flesh as well who I will call Brian.  I forget how we got on this topic, but he told me that he was banned from another theater company for two years of which his wife was on the board of.  Banned?  How did that happen?  He said he made an inappropriate comment to someone.  He said to this teenage girl who was in a past production that she looked like a younger version of his wife, and he'd like to have a threesome with her and his wife.  Apparently this was reported to others, and he was banned from participating in the company for two years.  He said he is going to mental health treatment and is on medication for this.

I am rather astounded at this - in our hair trigger "I'm offended by what you did/said" world we live in did he really think that was a funny thing to say?  I have been ripped to shreds by others over comments and not having a filter in the past, I have learned to be very, very tightly contained with others because you never know who can and will take something and use it against you. I am a blank slate with people. Why? Because I am one of those people who can't do/say anything they want and get away with it, others can, but I can't. 

[Sanch62]

3 hours ago, ThorLyonsSalem said:

I am a blank slate with people. Why? Because I am one of those people who can't do/say anything they want and get away with it, others can, but I can't. 

I think you're smart. Use this 'blank slate' time as an observation and learning period. If you can remain open to doing that without imposing broad assumptions about 'people' in general, you can learn how to read specific rooms or groups or individuals to learn the best ways within each context to serve your own best interests. You'll drop concerns about what others 'get away with' as you allow, instead, the behaviors of others to strike you as either 'in service' or 'a disservice' to what YOU, yourself, would prefer to accomplish in those particular scenarios.

One person's intention may be limited to their own self-expression rather than to serve and respect anyone else or the larger purpose of a given group. So while someone might  'appear' to get off unscathed for certain expressions, we don't know whether they might be addressed behind the scenes in private. Meanwhile, we can learn that our OWN self-tuning in terms of context is our own responsibility, and learning this is to our own advantage.

The most authentic, vulnerable, self-expressive, and successful people I know have still learned how to curate certain speech to best reach certain audiences. If we're unwilling to learn how to do that for ourselves, then we fail to recognize that a lack of censorship does not necessarily equal a lack of consequences.

Edited 15 hours ago by Sanch62