• macrocarpa@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Responding directly to the person in the comic

    I hear you when you say that as a woman, you feel societal expectations of you can be harsh and contradictory.

    There isn’t a way for me to experience the same things that you experience, but I can try to empathise with your experiences by comparing them with my own, and noting times when I have felt the same way. This means that I have to compare my experiences with yours. It isn’t done from a place of contest, but from trying to relate.

    • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Good point. I think in a case like this it’s useful to explicitly point out that you’re trying to relate, and to format your response as a question so as to demonstrate that you’re actually interested in her experience. The fact that she will likely have experienced a lot of bad- faith responses will mean that we need to tread carefully when trying to compare our experiences.