What’s So Wrong With Treating Each Other With Respect?
By: Janelle Annemarie Heideman
Tags: Respect, Self, Transgender, LGBTQ, Equality

What’s So Wrong With Treating Each Other With Respect?

Be Excellent To Each Other

Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash

Be Excellent to Each Other

I facilitate a support group for transgender, non-binary, and intersex people, and we always start off with basic rules we agree to follow. For the benefit of new group members and veterans alike, I usually go off script and simplify the rules. Hence, the rule about confidentiality — keeping what goes on in the group to ourselves — becomes “the Vegas Rule” (“What’s said here, stays here).

One of the rules is about treating each other with respect. I’ve come to call this the “Bill and Ted Rule:” Be Excellent to Each Other.

If you are not familiar with it, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was a film starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, released in 1989. The plot: Bill and Ted are clueless teenagers about to flunk out of history. A man from the future (played by the late George Carlin) travels back in time and takes them on a journey through time to create the ultimate history class project.

Why would someone go back in time to save two clueless kids from flunking history? According to Rufus (George Carlin’s character), these two guys are starting a band that will be the foundation for a utopian society. If they flunk, they will be separated and this very excellent future will not happen.

The band is Wyld Stallions. The catch phrase that future followers hang their society on? Be excellent to each other. (And also, party on, but that’s not the main point of this essay).

The Message? Treat Each Other With Respect

The film’s message is obvious, if a bit, well, utopian. Treat each other with respect and we will have a perfect society. Sure, the movie is meant to be over the top and silly, but does that mean there is anything wrong with treating each other with respect?

Whether it brings about a perfect society or not, isn’t treating each other with respect just something we should do just because it is the right thing to do?

I certainly agree, and believe most people would, too. A little respect can go a long way. If someone is treated with respect, they are more likely to treat others with respect. And if a few people do not universally treat others with respect, they would be in the minority and still respected by others — Christ’s whole “turn the other cheek” philosophy.

No, I’m not saying that emulating Jesus (or even Bill and Ted) is the answer. There has been a whole bunch of religions built up around that (following Jesus, not Bill and Ted, though I would love to see that, too), with mixed results in terms of how much respect these followers are encouraged to give universally.

Yes, the model is usually to treat everyone with respect, but the practice is a little different. Most religions, for example, don’t go all in on respecting those with different beliefs. Anyone different, outside the “norm” (however that’s defined) get more suspicion than respect.

Why It Hasn’t Worked (So Far)

And that’s where it all breaks down. Humans are tribal by nature. We only trust those in our own tribe. Someone different or outside our worldview is hard to trust or respect. If I were taught a bunch of expectations — rules for society to follow — from an early age, and I met someone who didn’t fit those expectations, it would be difficult to fit them into my world at all. It would be a real uphill struggle to know them well enough to trust and respect them.

The good news is that the world — and the nature of our tribes — is changing. My family of choice, for instance, is much larger than the family I was born into and includes people from a lot of backgrounds I wouldn’t even have conceived of as a child growing up in the Detroit suburbs.

The fact that I did not fit the rigid pattern many had laid out — I was not straight, cisgender, neurotypical, able-minded (or bodied, for that matter). In short, I was not normal — whatever that means. I did not fit.

This is where I could have pursued my own misanthropy. In the early days, I did. Pre-sobriety, pre-transition, I was often a real asshole. I had a chip on my shoulder the size of a Buick. I was miserable.

I had to forgive myself and learn to understand others in order to treat everyone with respect. It is an ongoing process. Even for people with whom I have no agreement I try to find respect.

What Does Respect Mean? Do I Have to “Like” Everybody?

Treating others with respect does not mean you have to be friends with them, or even like them very much. It just means that every human being deserves a basic amount of dignity and respect.

I may not agree with someone’s religious or political beliefs, and I might even go so far as to say someone is doing something bad or wrong if I believe they are. If a religious figure supports political figures demonstrating behaviors that go against his/her stated beliefs, I will call out the hypocrisy.

For example, see my previous story:

What I won’t do is ridicule or question someone’s beliefs. I might state that I do not believe the same things as they do, and I might poke holes in the logic of certain beliefs. I don’t believe the Bible is anything but good literature, and I will be the first to point out the contradictions in it (and the hypocrisy involved in living a life solely based on its contradictory teachings).

But I won’t say that someone else’s beliefs are invalid. I won’t say they can’t think that way, or that there is something wrong with them for thinking that way.

At the same time, I — as a queer, transgender, alcoholic, woman with ADD and depression — deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. In fact, all of us do, regardless of how we fit with someone’s world view.

Jesus also said something about what you do to the least of us you do to Him. I’m agnostic, so I’m not sure I can get behind that last part, but I can get behind the Martin Luther King, Jr. version: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

What this all means

So, yes, I think the world would be a better place if we all treated each other with respect. In fact, I think that is the only way forward that does not end in the total destruction of our society and the world around us.

Incidentally, in addition to treating other people with respect, it also means treating this world with respect. If we continue to treat the oceans as our dumping grounds, if we continue to destroy whole ecosystems in the name of profit, if we continue to spew carbon and carcinogens into the air, then we will have destroyed the only home we’ve known through disrespect.

In terms of treating other humans with respect, our society will be torn apart if we don’t figure it out. Every day, we see more messages in the news and social media that appeal to people’s sense of tribalism and petty hate. We hear about people acting out of fear and distrust. We see real people being hurt and killed because of that mistrust and lack of respect.

The Way Forward

Is it easy to treat others with respect? Not always. Do we have to learn to do it? I think so. Until no one is treated poorly (or worse, hurt and killed) for how they look, their gender, who they love, where they come from, who their ancestors were, or what they believe — and I mean no one — then there will always be wedges in our society, always something we must overcome if we are to survive.

The same goes for this big blue boat we sail through space on. It is our home, it is alive — with fauna, flora, and so much more.The flora and fauna are our fellow creatures and deserve respect just as much as we do. The Earth is our home — everyone’s — and should be appreciated and respected.

How do we go about this? As I said, it won’t be easy. But it can be done. As with so many things, I’m starting with myself. I am going to rededicate myself to treating everyone with respect. It’s a constant struggle, for reasons I have laid out here, but it is important.

I ask you to think about how you treat others. How would you want to be treated in their case? I am going to say something possibly controversial here (although it shouldn’t be): everybody is worthy of respect. Even those who don’t respect us. Even those who hate us. Everybody.

Think about how you can give respect and dignity even to those who your every instinct is saying do not deserve it. What about them can you respect? How can you treat them with basic dignity, even if they do not want to extend the same in return?

Do that, and one step at a time, we will be on the way to being excellent to each other.