The ranty part of the Hierarchy of Harm post

That last post was two-faced: loving and gentle in the top half, angry in the bottom half. I decided to split it into two; I really want people to hear the angry part, but I don't want it to overwhelm the loving part.

A few things I wish everybody would get:

1. Just because it's "natural" doesn't mean it's not a trigger.

Let me repeat that: JUST BECAUSE IT'S "NATURAL" DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT A TRIGGER.

To emphasize this, I will tell you that I have been made ill by herbal teas ordered by people sitting at my table. Also, if you think for a minute you will be able to come up with a list of a hundred natural things that can be harmful to some people, from pollen to snake venom. So please, please, please, stop telling us folks when we ask you not to use something that's making us ill that it is impossible because it's "natural." When you say, "It's really the chemicals that people react to, not the scent," you may be right about some people, but you are wrong about a whole bunch of other people including me. It's possible I'm going to stab the next person who says this to me, so you'll want to be very careful about it from now on.

2. This goes for essential oils, too.

3. I am not the only person who is sensitive to scents and chemicals.

I really appreciate it when you "try to remember" not to put perfume on when we're meeting for lunch. But all those days when we are not meeting for lunch, and you wear perfume, you may be making other people ill, giving them headaches, or triggering their asthma. When people treat this as an issue that they only need to think about because of that one friend of theirs, it puts every sensitive person in the position of having to advocate for herself all the time, and this is stressful and exhausting. I get tired of having to ask, everywhere I go, for people to make "special" accommodations for me, or of telling someone they've made me ill after I'm already ill, which feels really crappy to both of us. [And those times you forget to try to remember, and wear the perfume? They break my heart.]

If you stop thinking of this as an issue of mine, as something that you only need to think about when you know you're going to see me, but instead as something that you do for the well-being of all kinds of people you don't know who might be in that stuffy conference room with you, or in line behind you at the grocery store, or on the bus, if you start to think of it as something you do for the sake of accessibility, you won't have to "try to remember" not to put perfume on to have lunch with me, because you won't be wearing it anyway.

I'm not special. I'm unlucky in this way, but I'm so far from being the only one that it's not funny. This is not an issue about me. It's an issue about accessibility and harm reduction. Please consider taking a step down the Hierarchy of Harm. I will thank you, and the unknown person who does not have to go to bed for two days after you get in the elevator with him thanks you, too.

[Also, I say this with all love: if you find yourself wanting to post a comment that is a defense of your choice to use perfume or other scented products, please squash that impulse. I don't need to hear it again. That's your choice, you don't need to justify it to me, and I'm not going to give you my blessing. "But I just don't feel dressed until I've put on my perfume," is another thing that's getting awfully close to a justifiable stabbing offense, so tread lightly. I know this is hard; I've lived with it a long time. You have my sympathy if you just don't get it, or don't want to be told you have to change one more behavior, or think me and people like me are just entitled whiners, or want me to forgive you for refilling the fragrance-free soap bottle in your bathroom with Dial, as one of my best friends recently did. Lots of very good people have been, or are, in that same spot. But right now in my life, beyond writing this and other things about the issue, I can't be the one to help you with that. Because I realized as I was writing this that I'm carrying a lot of anger and pain about this right now.]