AITA for my roommate expecting me to tiptoe around his values while he openly insults mine constantly (mine are non-traditional), and not get irritated?
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What it says on the tin, but examples;
We were discussing something and he made the assertion that the context of actions don't matter, only the actions themselves. I thought this was ridiculous, and I used an extreme example to illustrate it. I said, "okay, what about killing?". Now, I was prepared to bring to the table some arguments about the sanctioning of killings, then draw parallels between the Mafia and State Sanctioned Executions, and then to further illustrate the point I planned to compare state-sanctioned executions in the US or South Korea to The Philippines or Russia. My roommate is former military, and he immediately jumped to the argument "well when someone is trying to kill you, you don't have much of a choice". I was prepared for a much more complex argument, but sure, I'll take a softball lobbed over the plate. "Military service is non-compulsory in the United States". No judgments, no insults, just a simple statement of factually correct. He completely flipped his shit and started yelling at me. After a few days, I decided to be the bigger person and offer an olive branch. I told him I apologized if I upset him, and he never said anything similar back. Then he told me how some of his family members have called him "baby killer" and things like that for being in the military. Which I did not and do not see how that relates to anything, as I said NOTHING of the sort. Am I responsible for tiptoeing around his emotional problems?
A second time, he brought up the topic of LGBTQ groups and that he believes things have gotten a bit excessive. I stated that (and I'm sure I'll take some crap for this, but look up the difference) gender identity and sexual preference are different, and some people confuse the two or try to combine them. I also stated that I thought some were slightly ridiculous, like sapiosexuality. That's a personality trait that exists on a spectrum for almost every person on the planet, it is not a sexuality. So he took that statement and ran with it and said several blatantly bigoted things, then started denigrating polyamory, and that people that believe in it are immoral people who want to feel like they can cheat and not feel bad. I very much believe in polyamory. What he said was offensive to me. I did not address it because I didn't feel it was worth creating conflict in my home over. Should I have to deal with this kind of shit? Because my beliefs are not normative do have less of a right to be respected? Should I have to expect this double standard because of socially-normative beliefs?
^^^^AUTOMOD Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read this before contacting the mod team
What it says on the tin, but examples;
We were discussing something and he made the assertion that the context of actions don't matter, only the actions themselves. I thought this was ridiculous, and I used an extreme example to illustrate it. I said, "okay, what about killing?". Now, I was prepared to bring to the table some arguments about the sanctioning of killings, then draw parallels between the Mafia and State Sanctioned Executions, and then to further illustrate the point I planned to compare state-sanctioned executions in the US or South Korea to The Philippines or Russia. My roommate is former military, and he immediately jumped to the argument "well when someone is trying to kill you, you don't have much of a choice". I was prepared for a much more complex argument, but sure, I'll take a softball lobbed over the plate. "Military service is non-compulsory in the United States". No judgments, no insults, just a simple statement of factually correct. He completely flipped his shit and started yelling at me. After a few days, I decided to be the bigger person and offer an olive branch. I told him I apologized if I upset him, and he never said anything similar back. Then he told me how some of his family members have called him "baby killer" and things like that for being in the military. Which I did not and do not see how that relates to anything, as I said NOTHING of the sort. Am I responsible for tiptoeing around his emotional problems?
A second time, he brought up the topic of LGBTQ groups and that he believes things have gotten a bit excessive. I stated that (and I'm sure I'll take some crap for this, but look up the difference) gender identity and sexual preference are different, and some people confuse the two or try to combine them. I also stated that I thought some were slightly ridiculous, like sapiosexuality. That's a personality trait that exists on a spectrum for almost every person on the planet, it is not a sexuality. So he took that statement and ran with it and said several blatantly bigoted things, then started denigrating polyamory, and that people that believe in it are immoral people who want to feel like they can cheat and not feel bad. I very much believe in polyamory. What he said was offensive to me. I did not address it because I didn't feel it was worth creating conflict in my home over. Should I have to deal with this kind of shit? Because my beliefs are not normative do have less of a right to be respected? Should I have to expect this double standard because of socially-normative beliefs?
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