The Flip • Field Notes • 15 / 15

BOUNDARIES

noun
I.

Healthy when powerful people enforce them

II.

Cruelty when vulnerable people do

Not technically a contranym, but culturally it behaves like one. A boundary is treated as healthy self-protection when coming from the powerful, and as cruelty or selfishness when asserted by the vulnerable.

Tags power asymmetry
Field Note

“Honorary contranym. The real asymmetry is the essay.”

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