fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2216 ]

[ SECRET POST #2216 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2216 ⌋

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Notes:

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So, in a bit of real talk, I've found myself becoming increasingly disenfranchised with activist communities. And as much as it might surprise some people here I guess, I was very into them for years (heavily involved in LGBT society at Uni, which was sort of a central focal point - and followed it on online after graduation).

Just everything about them has slowly gotten to me, to the point I find them basically intolerable to have any real discussion in.

Anyone else followed the same path? I guess the final straw was getting called a rape apologist and troll for pointing out just what a stupid idea it is to carry a knife for defence.

I suppose as a non-VEM my perspective might be different, but anyone else here undergone the same process?

VEM?

Visible ethnic minority (though colloquially it's used to refer to any clearly visible minority status - being a woman or in a wheelchair would be included, mental illness and sexuality wouldn't).

Ah! Thanks for the definition.

Also, speaking as a VEM, I definitely find online activism to primarily be slacktivism, and generally way too extremist/black-and-white/if-you-ever-fuck-up-you're-the-worst-waste-of-flesh-ever.

Depends if you're talking online or off. Online I got sick of them awhile ago, but I'm still involved in a few offline/real world activist communities or organizations.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:
I have PTSD. I'm gender- and sexually- queer. I'm very poor. Most of my life I've been presenting as a chick. I've been bullied, harassed, assaulted, raped several times including a gang-rape. I grew up in a community of drug addicts and criminals. I've been shot at and stabbed because of where I lived and the people I hung with. And on and on. I used to really love activism, because so much of it supposedly should be about helping people like me. But I've grown really disillusioned with it.

After ten years I've realized none of it is about helping people like me. Because I'm poorer and more 'ethnic' than the white middle-class assholes who make up 99% of SJ circles. Because I haven't been to college so I'm not up on all the buzzwords. Because I've seen from experience just how in-applicable modern SJ theories are to the real fucking world, how activist circles talk down to us poor ghetto folk by treating us like modern noble savages who can do no wrong even when we're doing wrong.

And I've seen how people take good ideas like trigger warnings for people like me, and willfully misunderstand how and why they should be used and what the limits of their usefulness are. Trigger warnings are fucking USELESS a good portion of the time, because PTSD doesn't work like that. We've perpetuated this myth that triggers are these easily explainable things like 'every time I see someone mentioning rape I start shaking and get nauseous and upset' rather than the extremely complex layers of connection and reaction that PTSD sufferers have with trauma. (It's like these people have never seen fucking movies about soldiers, where the guys go home and have flashbacks at all sorts of unrelated things.) And its all so people can pat themselves on the back every time they type out "TW:" because they can feel like they're really helping people like me, and then they get all fucking indignant or confused when someone with PTSD asks for a warning they didn't think of or says the warnings aren't useful.

(This is why I wish more people would adopt "content" labels or "squick" warnings. Useful to everyone and its not corrupting or spreading misinformation on the meaning of 'trigger' for people who actually have them.)

And of course there's also the fact that people are so focused on fighting the man that its bad to even examine problems in our own communities. Like, the neverending racism and classism in feminist circles. Or the misogyny in so much of the trans* community. Or the sex-shaming in anti-racist circles. Or the prude-shaming (not sure what to call it) in certain parts of the gay community. Or even having discussions about drug use and crime. These are all things that need to be addressed but they're constantly swept under the rug under the umbrella of "victim-shaming", because we can't hold victims of one thing responsible for their actions elsewhere.

tl;dr yeah, I'm fucking done with it.

I'm actually genuinely curious about the misogyny in trans* communities - if you or anybody else can explain this. I've heard this said several times, but it's not something I've personally come across despite being trans* and in a trans* community. I don't know if it's conspicuously absent in that community, or if I'm just missing it, and I'd really like to be able to recognize these sorts of problems.

ayrt
I've mostly seen it from ftm guys (understandably because a guy is more likely to be a misogynist than a mtf woman). Basically lots of 'girls are catty' and 'girls only talk about boys/clothes/whatever' and 'girls are bitches'. Sort of a grade school mentality. But there's also lots of 'misandry is real because guys have to shave their faces just like girls have to shave their legs' false equivalencies that you'll see get thrown around. And dudebro entitlement, that straight women should be automatically sexually available for them just because they work out or whatever and any chick who isn't interested is just a bitch or discriminating because they're trans (even when those women don't know that the guy is trans).

There's also lots of really heavily misogynistic vagina-shaming in parts of the ftm community. Like, 'I need to get a dick because c*nts are gross and smelly' type comments. Again, dysphoria can explain it, but dysphoria isn't an excuse for sexism. There's also lots of fat-phobia (for a few reasons, such as it being easier for thin people to pass in either direction) that tends to tie in with the sexist attitudes.

(And, personal anecdata, I identify as genderqueer/fuck now, but I used to identify as ftm because I was entertaining the idea of transitioning, and the really horrifically gross sexism of so many ftm guys basically entirely turned me off transitioning and made me embrace the parts I had even if my gender doesn't match.)

Holy crap. I have never seen any of this o____o FWIW, I'm FTM and I understand that none of that is okay, and none of the FTM guys I've been around have acted like this. Not all of us guys (cis or trans!) fall into the horrible traps of "acceptable masculine behavior" Western culture shoves down our throats :(

I'm sorry you've had such a gross experience with them :c That's just appalling behavior, no matter who it's from.

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-26 23:25 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-27 00:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-27 01:50 (UTC) - Expand

We've perpetuated this myth that triggers are these easily explainable things like 'every time I see someone mentioning rape I start shaking and get nauseous and upset' rather than the extremely complex layers of connection and reaction that PTSD sufferers have with trauma.

THANK YOU. This drives me fucking nuts.

If you write about this stuff anywhere, I would like to read it. I'm really tired of the window-dressing solutions and rampant, arrogant ignorance I've encountered in modern activism.

Nope, sorry. :( I thought about keeping a blog about it for a while, but I'm really not a terribly good writer and I think I would just exhaust myself trying to keep up with it.

(Plus, I'd worry that it would bring endless hate from the SJW crowd. blegh.)

It wouldn't have to be a space where you wrote a lot, or kept writing in perpetuity. You just sound like you have relevant stuff to say that is actively being stifled, because of conflicting interests and because a lot of activism these days is toothless and ineffective but how dare anyone admit that?

It wouldn't have to be a journal that allows comments. :) Or is linked to you.

I just - it kills me that organizations that are mobilizing money and resources supposedly to help poor and oppressed people can afford to not listen to them, and the internet is only sometimes any good at exposing that hypocrisy.

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-27 02:32 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Activist Communities

aquila_black - 2013-01-27 02:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-27 04:20 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Activist Communities

aquila_black - 2013-01-27 04:25 (UTC) - Expand

There's one...not really activist, but safe-space community I still follow that occasionally brings up activist topics. I don't really get involved so much with anything, though, because yeah, people just end up being opinionated douches, especially when their opinions are harmful and faulty. I think people in physical communities tend to be more empathetic and compassionate towards other members and more willing to listen and communicate. Online communities, while they can be great resources, also tend to cater to the armchair activist who think being "steadfast" means being "pigheaded."

tl;dr: I feel you.

How the fuck is it a stupid idea to protect yourself?

It isn't.

But if you carry a knife without significant training the outcome will almost invariably be you getting stabbed.

Knives are a tool used to kill or maim, just like a gun. If you don't know how to use it, you shouldn't be carrying it around with you. If you aren't extremely practiced with it and prepared to use it to its full potential, you shouldn't be whipping it out in a conflict situation.

Taking out a knife when you're being attacked will escalate the conflict, not defuse it.

"stupid idea to carry a knife for defense" ≠ "stupid idea to protect yourself."

The second you lose control of that knife, it's in your attacker's hands. You've just made the situation that much worse. Even if you don't lose control, there's a very good chance that you'll hurt yourself if you're not skilled with knives.

A friend of mine took a self defense class and was issued a beat-stick of sorts - it's about six inches long, half-inch diameter, and goes on her keychain. She can use it for defense because she knows how to utilize it, but an attacker isn't going to see it as a viable weapon to use against her. That's how you can protect yourself without putting yourself in more danger.

Yeah, those things -- I can't believe I can't remember what they're called -- are great for self-defense, especially when you know how to use them, but it's worth note that in some states in the US it's considered a concealed weapon, which may or may not be considered illegal.

is it an asp?

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-27 00:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Activist Communities

(Anonymous) - 2013-01-27 01:02 (UTC) - Expand

Yes and no. I've managed to avoid most of the sanctimonious crusaders, as a result of having zero patience for their (non)arguments. But I am interested in changing the world in certain ways. I guess - I've realized that having a pre-formed community is optional, and having experts who everyone's trusting and citing to each other is often detrimental. I am interested in a few people who seem to be getting things done, and I have been following my own best judgment. No amount of straw arguments and pop social justice are going to convince me to let other people handle politics on my behalf. And I think that's what most of this name-calling is designed to do: wear people out and chase them out, so that the (loud, opinionated) ones who remain can say what they like unchallenged.

I...admit, I'm a little skeptical since you've point blank admitted that you'd, basically, police what someone of a minority decided to feel about a word that's been used in the past as a slur for that minority.

That said, my problem with most online 'activist' communities is that *everything* is black or white, and if anyone has a different point of view, then they're automatically in the wrong. I've seen way too much dog piling and attacking happen because someone said something just different enough that it wasn't ~perfectly~ the same to have much, if any, faith in them.

Plus, and this is a pet peeve, it gets to me a little the fuck out of me that they'll have a very big 'Who gives a fuck' reaction when it comes to the homeless, because it isn't a ~ glamorous~ issue.

DA

Relevant tidbit reblogged by Maymay (http://days.maybemaimed.com/post/33028244161/one-of-the-purposes-of-discourse-is-to-normalize) "— Rebecca Crane (@wanderingpirate) October 5, 2012

“Pop social justice,” as I’ve come to call it, concerns itself primarily with the establishment of a particular party line and the mustering of social capital among adherents to defend that worldview, offering powerful human resources in exchange for compassionate freethought.

For people consumed by The Abstracted Persona of the Anti-Ism Community At Large (TAPAICAL) (http://alicorn24.livejournal.com/44922.html), “truth” and “justice” are not outcomes, methodologies, or principles. Rather, they are rhetorical swords with which to cut out dissent. For such people, “social change” is functionally synonymous with fascism or thoughtcrime."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Same here, I'm just getting sick of all the constant rage and 'if you don't do, say or act like Y then your 'white' mentality.

It's even worse when it happens, in real life too.

I once had this white lady refuse to try a dish I made from my own culture because, and I'll never forget this, ever, she said "The effects of colonialism, on your country, by my people means it's would be wrong for me to try this food."

I just kinda stood there, plate in hand, and I was speechless.

I'd like to live in a place where we could share cultures, love one another, and live in peace...is that too much to ask?

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