On three specific occasions I have met with a shrill, ferocity that reeks of insincerity. All three events involved my photography. All three involved human offspring, and all three involved mothers. Middle-aged, caucasian, heavily suburbanated mothers.
When my father used to hear me object a bit too excessively, he would often say
Me thinks thou doth protest too much.
a line from Hamlet.
The phrase is used in everyday speech to indicate doubt of someone's sincerity
Wikipedia
I don't know how it feels to be a mother. I can't imagine. I can't imagine the sacrifice, the pain, the heartache. Moreover, I can't imagine the regret, the thought that one's life might have been better had one not been a mother.
I highly value my privacy, and I wish to respect others. Nonetheless, on these three occasions, the offence taken to my invasion, if any, of the family's privacy, pales compares to how your governments and industries are violating your privacy. Every day. Every second. I suspect these mothers wish to vent their frustration over the invasion of their families privacy, and that they did.
The first occasion occurred when I tried to take a photo of some boys digging a hole to send to a buddy for a nostaligic laugh. I had not been back long from Japan, and the Japanese don't enjoy living in fear the way much of the world does. WE severely underestimated the scorn and fury I would suffer from the children's mother.
The boys were secondary school ages, and after taking the photo, I decided I should approach the mother to ask if I could send the photo to my buddy. Before I could take a step towards her, she descended on me with all the rage she felt towards the male of the species.
On the second occasion, I was in the photograph, and the late teenage child and I had had a good relationship. The rage again seemed to be misplaced.
On the third occasion, the two young boys were sitting on swings, with their backs to me. I had wished to capture the innovative use of the swings for marketing a shop. The boys would not have been indentifiable in the photograph, and again, before I had a chance to show the photograph to the parents, the loud, proud, i'm-in-charge voice of parental authority boomed.
If I saw a person taking a photo of my daughter, which I suspect many have and do, every day, I would politely approach them to make a neutral inquiry. If I prefered they not photograph my child, I would politely ask the photographer to delete the photo. Admittedly, my family has made, is making, and will make sacrifices that no reasonable person would wish on anyone.
In the first and third instances, I began to show the mother that I was deleting the photo. Her rage consumed her more than her interest, if any, to find a satisfactory resolution. Also, I deleted the photo from the Bin. In both one and three, I tried to offer my business card, and explain I'm an attorney. (My naïveté knows no bounds.) I couldn't get the words out of my mouth. She, both of them, won. I lost, again because they spoke louder, interrupted me, and would not permit me to finish my sentence.
In all three occasions, the reactions seemed grossly disproportionate to the offence. WE were reminded of the indignation expressed by the parents of the children of the Columbine massacre.
Do the mother, the spouse, a family member, or friends work in an industry which is getting rich off of stealing your intellectual property? Are people hypersensitive to their own privacy because they know they are feeding their children by violating yours? Because they, deep down, know their economy exists as it does because Our intellectual property runs their computers, fuels their stock markets, and feeds their innovation?
Within certain limits...the less money you have, the less you worry.
George Orwell
Which, as is often my wont, brings me to a very roundabout, globally politically relevant observation. Americans feel threatened such that a person sneezing in Venezuela may well result in a perceived violent, territorial danger to the United States of Allen. One cannot exaggerate the ludicrous fear on which people love to live. Not just Americans. America's forte has been turning that fear into the foundation of their economy and purported democracy.
https://www.statista.com/chart/18417/global-weapons-exports/
As can been seen in the infographic, America sells more arms than the second through seventh nations COMBINED. At what point does a nation have a Ministry of Offence more than a Ministry of Defence? If half the world is on offence, and half on defence, and their are about 200 nations in the world, if your nation is in the top 100 of arms dealers in the world, you are offensive.
