(no subject)

[kradeelav]

And then there's people who treasure getting to "punch" others because they've been "punched", and they feel - maybe deep down, in an inchoate, unexamined way – that fairness dictates that there be someone they get to "punch" in turn. The people who "punched" them used the rhetoric of fairness, or justice, or being wronged, to justify abusing them, so they feel when they're wronged they should get to "punch". Sunshine, that is not how this works. Nobody is entitled to have victims on demand. That is not what "punching" is for. Even if we allow the "punching up vs punching down" standard, it does not mean that because you had a bad day at work or a fight with your spouse that you are entitled to find someone of more status than you to use as a punching bag for the sake of soothing your emotional disregulation. People are not things to be used, and most specially not things to be used as drugs for self-medicating bad moods.

- siderea, the Problem with Punching Up