Respect or Courtesy?

There are very few people whom I genuinely respect in my life:
Cookie- Because he's awesome. He's everything that I think a really great person ought to be. Honest, hard-working, loyal, trust-worthy, kind to small children and animals... You get the picture, I'm sure.
My Brother- Because no matter how hard life knees him in the nuts he keeps moving on without becoming bitter or cynical. He always has a smile on his face. He's another good guy.
My Bestie- Because no matter what she's always had my back, and she's another awesomely great person.
There might be a handful more, but I don't care to list them all because I think most people will get the point- That respect is something I reserve for people I hold in high esteem. For me, it's not something I hand out to just anybody, it's something that those folks got after years of being really good people, people I could depend on, people I wanted to respect because of their words and actions.

So when I see people talking about respect, my mind always does this annoying "Huh What?" thing because they're generally talking about affording what I think of as a "High Esteem" honor to strangers. Mostly strangers who think they deserve the honor just because they've slapped a title in front of their names.

And then I think, "Are they actually talking about courtesy?"

To me, courtesy and respect are not interchangeable ideas. I see courtesy as the stuff that greases the wheels of pleasant society: Saying please and thank you, holding doors, using honorifics to address strangers (something that gets tricky in the kinkyverse), you know- generally acting like a decent human being and being pleasant towards others. Courtesy is something that everybody deserves.

To me they're different concepts, respect and courtesy.

And I only mention it because it might help newbies who hear "All D-types deserve respect!" to think about it in a different way- That perhaps nobody deserves your respect until you find them deserving of your respect... But until then, they definitely deserve common courtesy (as do you). And when you think about this sort of thing as just a courtesy issue, or a "good manners" thing, it's a lot easier to get a handle on how folks, especially strangers, deserve to be treated.


Disclaimer: YMMV. My opinion and it only applies to me. If you have different views that's cool, I'm not right and you're not wrong (and vice versa). Our opinions just differ. Rock on.