Today I was pondering lines during my lunch break. By "lines" I specifically mean those you cross...the line between teasing and ridiculing; the line between play and obsession; the line between banter and verbal abuse; the line between romance and stalking.
Let's take the last one first. There's a common image in, say, romantic comedies that standing under your beloved's window at midnight and sighing is romantic; sending him or her notes, calling him or her at all hours, singing under his or her window, all of those are iconic images of romantic love. Romance is about focus on another, centering oneself in orbit around another person. You think about your beloved constantly. You think of ways to please him or her. You plan out future scenarios - dates, weddings, trips, etc. Another romantic staple is the unrequited or unknown love interest - the shy boy or girl who worships from afar, waiting for the perfect moment or for the other to realize "X" is a jerk and dump him or her so that you can swoop in and save your love object.
When does all this become stalking? Where is, indeed, the line? In our constant search for how-to guides, FAQs, quick lists, the ultimate guide to life, we tend to look for a concrete universal definition. What is to distinguish an ardent suitor from a stalker? It's actually deceptively simple - the line is not defined by the pursuer but the pursued. If a person is comfortable with the attention, then it is romantic. If it causes anxiety, uncertainty, even unease, then the behavior is not romantic, but transitioning to stalking.
The important point here is that the line is not defined by society in toto, or by the pursuer. What, you say, about someone who's overly sensitive? What about someone who cries "Stalker" over a perfectly innocent encounter or a single phone call? Anyone can draw up a nightmarish scenario of someone being accused of a crime he or she did not commit, but how likely is that, really? Certainly if someone went to the police and said "I'm being stalked!" and the recording officer found out that the individual only had one or two contacts with the victim the situation would be treated with the seriousness it deserved.
It's simple; if the person you're contacting says "stop, go away" you have one option - stop and go away. If it's a misunderstanding, and they truly don't want you to go away, well, they can open up communication later on.
What about the line between harmless jokes and expressions of prejudice? Again, the line is defined for each person differently. If you tell a joke, and someone gets offended, isn't it easier to just say "I'm sorry, I didn't know that bothered you" than to launch into a defensive rant about "loosening up" and "stop being oversensitive?" Most reasonable people would accept an apology and move on. Yes, there will be someone who gets too upset to accept an apology, there might even be an occasion when the joke is taken as an actionable insult - harassment, racism, what have you - and consequences may result. But if you can say "I apologized, I meant no offense" who do you think will have the most sympathetic audience? Certainly not someone who, in simple terms, says "X has no sense of humor."
It's common sense. Someone is offended by what offends them. You'll find, however, that people are usually a lot more forgiving than not.
So each of us has our own lines. We trip over others' lines, as they trip over ours. It's a challenge to all of us to watch out for those invisible social boundaries and respect the lines of others as we would wish them to respect ours. Just think; if someone crossed over my line, would I want to hear, "What's your problem? You're a wimp. You're too sensitive. You should loosen up. You're unreasonable." No. I'd want to be taken seriously and treated with respect.
