northern wind

Ice T Law & Order voice: sick son of a bitch would get his rocks off by forcing poly aromantics to watch the movie The Notebook

ok but wheremst is the number to dial i’m ready

it doesn’t sit well with me that “emotional labor” in it’s original context was Arlie Hochschild talking very specifically about how taxing face to face service industry jobs are for people (namely women) with this very nuanced context and is now used in everything from “i had to explain something to someone on twitter” or heavily in contexts of romantic relationships. not all emotional management and exchange is labor! to insert the idea of “labor” excessively into interpersonal relationships creates a system of “i performed ____ and now you OWE me for exerting ____” and it’s not healthy or what the term is for.

I think marginalized white people are more interested in ideological purity than in prioritizing people’s safety and wellbeing

It’s easy to surround ourselves in carefully selected “pure” language and theory but also we need to recognize that we don’t live in a society conducive to ideological purity or ethical consumption and when we try to apply that cleanly to a context of morality and even practice then it disproportionately negatively affects people of color just by the nature of racism

Ideological purity is a luxury and is indicative to me of someone who is privileged. Because it’s easier to isolate yourself and hammer out theory in an echo chamber without ever interacting with others/people of color but as soon as you try to apply that to strangers on the internet you are always going to fall short and wonder why people with very solid politics and a strong sense of morality consistently fail to meet your expectations

This is why people will fight to the death over whether “crazy” and “stupid” are ableist slurs and why (usually white) people will approach complex topics like desirability politics and slur/terminology reclamation as if they are black and white, clear cut, and easily analyzed. Because in the context of ideological purity yeah lots of times things have very cut and dry answers but if you exist anywhere inside the real world you find that your framework doesn’t work and will be deeply disappointed when people don’t meet your unrealistic and relatively harmful expectations. Approaching some things from an angle of “what is the answer to this question” as opposed to “how should this question be asked, if at all,” is how you can tell if you’re building your politics based on ideological purity rather than in practicality.