Grow a thicker skin? Really!?!?
That sort of attitude is complete and total bullshit. It's a right wing attitude on par with that annoying bootstrap stuff. We women, minorities, and gays are just too darn sensitive... can't take a joke... wasn't meant to offend... lighten up...
Sound familiar?
It's not all that different when someone is called a shill, purity troll, obamabot, whatever. The person on the receiving end of these types of comments have every reason to feel bad about it. It's designed to make people feel bad. That's why it's insulting.
If you are one of the people who have said or rec'd someone saying people need to "grow thicker skins" or something similar here, you need a sensitivity upgrade. Diaries and comments here do NOT write themselves. There is a person behind them, who may or may not be blessed with your confidence and godlike power of insult reflection.
Their feelings deserve consideration just like yours do. If someone isn't able to handle being insulted without a corresponding negative feeling about themselves or this site, it does not make them defective. They don't need to "grow a thicker skin", the people hurling the insults need to stop or we, as a community, need to enforce the rules.
There's been a lot of commentary on this site about civility recently. It's a huge deal because how are we supposed to work together for things we all support if we can't even be considerate of each other? I find it amazing how so many advocates of ideals like human rights and equality can be not only tolerant of people here treating each other shittily, but encouraging it.
Most of us even recognize the threat of bullying in schools and how tragic it can be for both the kids on the receiving end and the kids who are taught to be mean to their peers, yet we can't seem to agree to combat it in our own community. People commit SUICIDE every day because they have poor self image or feel like noone values them. We don't all have defenses to deal with even a mild insult.
Telling someone who isn't as capable as you are of shrugging off mean-spirited comments that they should stop writing here if they can't take it or grow a thicker skin is a really lousy thing to do. Not everyone who comes here to talk about things is a keyboard warrior with kevlar protecting their hearts. They deserve a chance to be a part of this community without having to deal with nasty personal attacks. We can't stop people from posting their mean spirited crap, but we can stop defending them and we can call it out for what it is when we see it.
*Some people will confuse insults for legitimate criticism so to clarify, I mean personal invective when I say insults