Ass+u+me

I have someone in one of my circles on Google+ who happens to have a very lucrative business selling sex toys.  Today he made a statement on his stream that sort of threw me off balance a bit.  He said, “They say it’s important to know who your customer is, but do I really want to know who my customer is that buys the inflatable butt plug?” 

My reply was, “(name here) you probably already DO know the person who would buy this! Even for those we think we know we never really do down deep to their souls and souls hide lots of secrets we don't tell the world. So as I said, I'm betting you already do know them.” 

I started thinking about their statement, especially in light of how they make their living, and I got more put off with every path my mind traveled.  It struck me as a very ‘Rupert Murdock’ sort of attitude.  ‘I’ll sell them this product and gladly take their money but I wouldn’t associate personally with them knowing that they do business with me.’  A sort of moral judgment per sae but to who’s morality?  It’s a very narrow and unfair view of those who’s patronage they rely and capitalize on.  I’ve been on the internet for about 15 years & I’ve hung out in adult rooms, fetish rooms, as well as general interest rooms and I can tell you that the majority of the people who hang out in the more colorful places are just the same as all the rest of the ‘vanilla’ crowd, they are just a bit more open and expressive of that specific facet of their life.  As long as I’ve been around I’ve talked to a great many people on a great many subjects and I know that those who purchase & use sex toys are not ‘deviants’ or those who are socially questionable.  And for those who are ‘questionable’ they aren’t more or less so if they buy or use them.  They just simply are regardless of that fact.  I’m not saying that there aren’t deviants out there who do use them but just as every oak is a tree but every tree is not an oak, the same goes here.  Deviants may buy sex toys but not everyone who buys them is a deviant.

I suppose what bothered me the most about what he said was that it was a reflection of a way of thought that I find incredibly erroneous and virulent.  It’s a negative painting of a person’s character overall based on a single small facet of the whole of what makes them up.  Example: We had a teacher locally who was an exemplary educator, very well respected and liked by both colleagues and students, but it was found that he wrote erotic poetry under a pseudonym.  He never published anything where his students might find it, never wrote about any illegal sexual content and didn’t do his writing during working hours.  Yet he happened to tell someone who told someone who either had an axe to grind against him, probably jealousy, or was a prude who then ‘turned him in’ and he was fired!  The sentiment being, ‘They didn’t want someone with that kind of mentality teaching their children.’ WTF?!  Teachers are to be eunuchs or asexual now?  First and foremost, no one pays anyone enough money to be able to dictate what an individual does with their life outside the workplace.  Somehow that area is becoming more and more blurred, thus more and more dangerous to our personal freedoms.  I don’t know how the rest went after that but it’s certainly not the only case of its kind.  I’m hoping he sued, got damages and reimbursement for the lunacy he should never have had to endure and moved on to a place where minds weren’t as littered with pompous narrow minded ugliness. 

I’ve often wondered if there was a degree in which we are responsible for how others see or perceive us.  What portion is our responsibility to what is theirs because they are most certainly viewing us through their own filters.  At what point does our liability end and theirs begin?  Or perhaps the better question would be, why the hell aren’t more of us asking ourselves that question or even recognizing that this is a commonly practiced behavior?  My theory is that if we looked more closely at why we do the things we do and to what ends they bring us as well as all others affected we might not engage in more of the less than desired acts that we perpetrate one against the other.  We’ve gone from the adage of ‘think first, act later’ to just act out and not think at all.  Is this were the murder of common sense was committed?  Our thoughts are the same as our actions.  Intellect demands governors on action.  Not to restrain them but to direct them to their most productive end.  There is a need to examine why is it we come to the conclusions we do, see the filters that we see life through clearly so that we understand why we make the conclusions thus take the actions that we do.  I’d like to remind readers here that there is NO single person in this place or in this life that you can trust gives you absolute unerringly accurate information 100% of the time yet we believe, without question, what we tell ourselves…  Hmm, something wrong with that equation is there not? 

What I am entirely certain of is my G+ friend should be very aware that he has likely already been and will continue to be personally painted by the very same brush of misperception that he himself welds far too easily.