𝓙𝓾𝓼𝓽 𝓪 𝓢𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓹

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

A random person who had a moderately shady past or fucked up views before shouldn’t need to flog themselves to show how penitent they are beyond just doing better now, just to be able to live their life in peace, but if someone is campaigning to get political power and all they have to say for their life up to that point being a field of red flags, it isn’t enough for them to say “well I’m not like that now” if they haven’t actually achieved anything that makes up for it in the opposite direction.

Intersex bodies do not need correcting, intersex bodies are not unnatural. Intersex people deserve autonomy.

@inside-the-mind-of-simon

I have experienced this a bunch of times myself when I was a kid, but also have run into both times I observed child abuse and tried to get the child help. And that is this idea:

If they are abused, why don't they ask for help?

People told me that if my mother abused me, I should just have gotten help. Tell the CPS.

And when I reported the abusive parents of other kids, CPS told me: "Well, this child is a teen. They can talk. If they truly are abused they can call CPS themselves."

Which is absolute bullshit. Because that is not how this works. And fucking CPS should know this.

A child has no point of reference of what is a normal home life and what is not. If a child is getting abused, they often will assume that this is just how parents treat children. This especially goes for non-physical abuse. While children might at some point start to realize that being beaten until heavily bruised is not considered "normal", as this topic tends to be discussed in media from time to time, everything else is not. And even with being beaten... a big thing is: most kids will not be beaten or otherwise abused in front of outsiders. So what the child will usually take from this is: "This is how parental care looks like. Everyone is being treated this way by their parents. We do not talk about this. That is just one of those social rules that I do not fully understand. It is a thing that just happens but does not get talked about. Okay." Because a child has a very limited framework for understanding the world. Duh.

When I was a child and I was being mostly verbally and emotionally abused by my mother, I never thought it was an issue. I assumed all mothers treated kids this way. This was not helped by children's books (like Harry Potter) portraying this kind of abuse as positive, or by the fact that teachers did know some of it, and just never called it out as a thing. I ran away from home twice, and the only two adults who ever flagged it as a possible issue were mothers of romantic partners I had - one of whom was herself abusive to her son due to her depression, and the other was obviously not listened to because she was openly queer while raising a child in the early 2000s.

This is also, mind you, why kids need to be taught at a certain age about sexual abuse. Because if you turn this into a taboo topic, every sexually abused child just will think: "Oh, this is just a secret thing adults do with kids and that is happening to every kid, and it just is not a thing we talk about. Understood."

And also, to the CPS worker who told me - upon me telling her that my neighbor was beating his kids - that "the oldest is 13, she can call herself"... Just fuck you. Fuck you. I get that CPS is overworked and underfunded. But just... fuck you.

Additionally to this, there is also the issue that most kids tend to still love their parents. Even if they are getting abused. Partially because everything in the world tells them that they need to love their parents. Partially because there likely is some inherent bonding between young and their parents. And partially because even abusive parents will have good moments - a honeymoon phase and all that. And because of this, even if the kid realized they are being abused they often will not say to protect their parents. I mean, heck, worst part is that kids at times do understand that their parents are mostly just stressed and overwhelmed. Because I will remind y'all once more: abuse is rarely this massively calculated thing. It is usually that happens when people who themselves are often severely traumatized are put into situations where they are overwhelmed, and then let all of this out on someone who cannot fight back, be it romantic partners, friends, children, or animals.