nice/harsh?

I've been feeling guilty, like I'm too harsh or something, with myself and others. I was thinking maybe I'm having a bad reaction to someone, people who give off "bad vibes" and I'm thinking, is it me? I'm trying, really trying, to be nice, more compassionate, unlike the mentality I was raised with: get what you can, anyone who does wrong, has to pay.....you pissed me off so now you're gonna get it, that kind of thing. I'm thinking maybe what I was raised with was over the top, wrong. I was getting my stuff out of the locker, and this woman was standing right in front of mine. I said, as nicely as I could, I just need to get in there and get my stuff. I said, I'll be thirty seconds. I had been thinking I'm mean because I'm not open enough with other women. This woman is like, "Sure! You can take four hours for all I care." It was shocking. Why are women so nasty? What the hell did I do? If I call them out on their behavior, they just turn it against me. I'm the one with the problem, I'm crazy, this or that. I'd been thinking, is it me? and trying to change. Is this psychological terrorism, or just bitchiness? Between what happened with the Street Harassment Project where all these women teamed up to get the founding member out.....sororities, all the backstabbing (to be honest) and bitchiness I've encountered everywhere, really, I want to be friendly with women but you know this is what I get every time. It's always about them having to one up me, be better, somehow, show me who's in charge here.....always, it turns into some kind of deadly power struggle. Even when they smile to my face. It's so hard, it's such work, it's endless.....men pit us against each other, too. It's impossible to go out in this city now without facing harassment from men on the street, or come-ons, or judgement somehow. And I'd been made to feel so awful, like I'm mean, harsh, jealous, ect. I'm trying so hard to be nice, but so far it's led me into still more pain. Where do I go from here?

Someone in SHP once wrote about how we struggle so hard for positive change only to be brutally stabbed in the back by people we're trying to help.....and how....harsh again, there are better people to save and we should run the scumbags over, something to that effect. I don't want to be mean. But sadly, I've found that the struggle in any attempt at social justice is in realizing you're dealing with people who are not perfect, who may not be all innocent. Does that mean they deserve to be oppressed? Of course not.

I want to be forgiving, I don't want to walk around with anger and bitterness, et al. But the new philosophy and mentality I want to live with is one of compassion, and any religion that teaches otherwise is not one I want to go near. Still, maybe some people are really not worth saving, maybe they do deserve revenge. I can't let myself be hurt and even destroyed by someone who only lives for herself, who will never know what my life is like or any thing about me whatever, and yet feels entitled to make a judgment call or....always, always it turns to this, try to dominate me. When I stand my ground and refuse to take it, they somehow disappear, then they see themselves as the victims. It's never them, always others.

There were someone women in the feminist movement who tried to suppress any criticism of other women, or dismiss it, saying that women are really in solidarity together and united against sexism, and that to depict women in a negative light means you're negative, or that it will tarnish their image to the world and make it harder for progress to occur....things like that. It means not criticizing or openly saying anything that makes them less than a shining example of goodness. Well, wrongful behavior is wrongful, no matter who it's coming from, and I can't accept it or be silent about it. I can't lie to myself or to the world. This is the truth about what we're dealing with. The thing is though, I see that becoming equally negative is not the answer, so do I have to be cruel to be kind? Enough with the guilt?