on becoming desensitized to bigotry
I work at a small, private company with very little diversity. The vast majority of people I see daily are rich, able-bodied, cis white men. During a typical week I hear many ugly comments that are ignorant, privileged, chauvinistic, and insensitive on good days, to racist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic on Mondays.
I've been at this company for almost two years now. In the first few months I worked here hearing comments like these felt like getting poked with a cattle prod. I'd get so angry I couldn't speak and replayed the incidents in my head over and over again. I remembered the moments vividly and would complain about them to my friends over the phone.
I mention this because I was talking to a coworker after work yesterday who retold me some of the misogynistic things she'd heard recently and I realized I've started to become desensitized to the insensitive things I hear everyday in the office. It worries me, because I don't want to accept these very not-okay things as the norm. But how do I keep from going insane and jeopardizing my emotional health (and my job) without numbing myself even a little bit?