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.

If you are one of these people who use to practice harmful behaviors or have harmful beliefs (which, most of us are), and you run into people who are a part of the marginalized group said behavior and beliefs harmed and they openly distrust or avoid you, you are allowed to:

- Be distressed and have big feelings about the knowledge that there are just people who will never trust you again.

- Seek guidance and counsel from others (who aren’t a part of the above group) about these feelings.

You are not, however, ever allowed to:

- Whine that a marginalized person looking out for themselves and their community is being “mean”, or “unfair”, or “won’t let you change”.

- Use their distrust of you as an excuse to not put in the work.

The harsh truth is: for some people you have crossed a moral event horizon of sorts. That is to say, you’ve done something they can never forgive or something that irreparably breaks trust. Everyone has these lines; this is a normal human thing. It’s something I learned as I left my teen years; things I did to others that they will live with the scars of for the rest of their days. I can’t take that back and they have no obligation to forgive me or accept me into their life or their space or even their community.

This isn’t said to discourage you, this is said to refocus your efforts. In fact, another hard truth is: if your desire to change comes from a yearning for external validation (forgiveness), your change isn’t sustainable. Baby steps are important and it’s GREAT that you recognize any hurt you caused and want to do right by those people, but there must come a point where it stops being about wanting “to do right by [them]” and instead simply doing as right as you can.

I can hardly believe I’m quoting my mother here but one of the best pieces of advice she gave me was “stop being so attached to the outcome, that’s why you’re always anxious”. This is relevant because she often told me this after I put in a lot of work for something and it didn’t turn out and I would always wonder “lady what? I care a lot, this means a lot to me, why wouldn’t I be attached to it”. But as an adult it clicked for me, what she meant was to stop obsessing over things you can’t control. In this world, the only thing you can control is your actions. Not what your actions bring, not have people react to them, not how things turn out. None of that. Just you and your actions. So when you set out to do the work, to rehabilitate and unlearn harmful behavior and beliefs, remember that you can’t control how people will receive you.

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.