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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Progressive Community Clusterfuck Breakdown, a la TFC

*deep breath*
#1: I have left almost all the online Green groups I have belonged to for the better part of a year.
I support the Green party platform. I do NOT support the rise of the "Green party twatform".
Take your party shaming, purity testing shit down the ramp. We can have these kinds of petty difference squabbles when we knock down a few immediate, looming, BIG FUCKING PROBLEMS we should probably be dealing with instead.
Get your noses out of joint, goddamnit. We have shit to do, all of us. I'm done listening to everything and everyone be maligned over some nonsensical tinfoil hat, chemtrail, hippie bullshit purity tests that literally any and everyone could fail. I'm done watching people IN the Green groups nitpicking each other and everyone else to death. It's counter-productive and I'm not going to be involving myself in it, listening to/reading it, or entertaining that bullshit. Keep it AWAY from me.
#2: We all know INTENTIONAL, institutional racism is wrong and shitty. It's literally killing people every day. We seem to be way too content with ignoring inadvertent personal racism, and that's the death of progress.
Inadvertent personal racism is also wrong and shitty, but its both common and a phenomena that (as we can see from the last week or two) gets caught in a web of cognitive dissonance and hurt feelings, then silkspun by a great big defensive spider to the point that we can't even see the elements to the problem anymore. Fuck, we could barely see it to begin with and that's why it occurred.
It's not terribly difficult to fix, in practice. We're just scared of the practice for a variety of reasons (upon which people can, have, and do write endless academic papers that I won't emulate here). The point being, we sometimes need to shut up and listen and not assume we're being maligned because someone wants us to stop what we were doing and CONSIDER doing something else. You're not being attacked for being asked to listen to an alternate viewpoint.
We're making assumptions that are defensive and insecure, and its literally suffocating any hope of a productive conversation. When you are confronted, the assumption is NOT (and should not necessarily be immediately perceived as such) that you are a BAD person because you did something that someone found offensive or that you were oblivious to something that elicited very strong, negative reactions in someone else. If that were the case, the person petitioning your ear wouldn't be bothering. The assumption instead is that you are a GOOD person with sense who might simply be unaware of aspects to certain situations that you haven't had the opportunity to experience the exact same way as someone else.
That's it, y'all. The assumption you can actually SAFELY make is that we all see the world through different lenses, crafted by our experiences, relationships, and society. The SAFE assumption from that is simply that your experience is quite probably not exactly the same as someone else's. From that assumption, you can drop the defensiveness and actually hear what someone else has to say when they question your statements or actions. Being asked to think is not a punishment.
Inadvertent racism helps to support intentional racism, which is why it must be carefully deconstructed. Now, sometimes unpacking this inadvertent racism can be tricky. Know that its not SUPPOSED to "feel good" all the time. Growth does not come from remaining perpetually in comfortable and familiar places. Sometimes that means you're going to have to call out that one relative you really like, like Auntie Clau--- er.. CINDY, and tell her she's got shit backwards. It's going to make you feel like crap because you know she was oblivious to what she did, but you also know that there are at least five truths you can count on here:
1: Right is right, and it applies to everyone.
2: ^ Same thing goes for "wrong".
3: It might be better that you be the one to take her aside and try to explain things, before everyone on the Internet hands her a silver platter with her own ass on it.
4: "Letting it go" as a friend/family member only reinforces more of that behavior/speech/action. If you're never "wrong" there's no incentive or reason to change.
5: Being a hypocrite is lame and you don't wanna.
and one more..
#3: Can everyone stop being so fucking reactionary for like FIFTEEN MINUTES?
With the amount of drive and heart within progressive people, we might actually make something out of that fifteen minutes if everyone could stop trying to find excuses to change their status to "Butthurt" at all times.
This goes for everyone. Not just the people getting the hurt feels. This goes for you assholes with the witty comments who KNOW you're rubbing salt in an already salty wound.
For fucks' sake, knock this shit off for a week. Everyone needs to either organize and get the fuck over shit, or take a brief vacation.

EITHER IS FINE.

The Feminine Context