guys i hate tiktok so intimately as an app. forget it's shitty interface, the fact that you can't escape ads, and what it contributes to the normalization of privacy infringement and data mining/lack of need of individual privacy for specifically minors.
TERFS DNI
what i hate is the corporate sanitization that specifically targets and silences marginalized identities to the point that we have marginalized youths spouting the same reactionary rhetoric as your run-of-the-mill right winger in a woke font. what do you mean gay as a term is only meant for homosexuals and any other use of it in the community is appropriation?
the surface implication alone that bisexual people are not queer enough to call themselves gay is astounding.
that exclusionary, gatekeeping language is the exact same language that homophobes use to persecute us. you're not going to get off the chopping block just because you try to be one of the good ones. as soon as you turn your back on your community and try to dictate the terminology people use to define themselves you are aligning yourself with heteronormative social positionings and therefore standing against everything your community has sacrificed to build this comfy little niche you're stood in to spit your vitriol onto them. you don't respect identities you don't understand so how does that make you any different from your run-of-the-mill homophobe?
it atomizes conversations about marginalized identities down to the most palatable versions of them and strips us of the agency of our language to cater to a broad user base whilst effectively sanitizing the minds of the youth who have tt as their main point of online presence by conditioning them to expect narrow language (and the narrow viewpoints that follow, because when you can't use language as broadly as it's meant to be used, the language you have left can only go so far) as a commodity.
we are actively watching a generation get desensitized to tragedy/injustice whilst being hypersensitive to the language used around them that has been accurate and appropriate language for decades (dykefag, fagdyke, whatever) because it doesn't fit into the narrow model of appropriate language provided for them, and therefore the history and existence of these identities and everything they've contributed to their community is moot because they gendered too close to the sun and you didn't like it? if you don't understand subversion of heteronormativity as a basis of your advocacy for queer people and queer bodies, you do not get to explain or gatekeep any fucking term for how somebody identifies themselves within this community.
you are happy to ignore, stigmatize, and marginalize people in your community because they exist in their identity in a way you find difficult to understand because you are more concerned with not disrupting social positionings then you are with people actually finding and creating language to describe their own identities. (gateway to Reagan applogism) if you don't understand the social positionings of queer bodies how are you ever going to advocate for yourself or your community? you don't even have the social underpinnings to begin to have a conversation about queerness.
and this applies outside of the queer community too - it applies to conversations about Palestine and the rhetoric of "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free" being an antisemitic quote even though at it's inception it was a response to the zionist claim that "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" and tiktok removing videos with the former phrase and kids jumping on the "antisemitic" bandwagon every time they hear it.
it happens with conversations about activism being more than moral grandstanding and how you have to do more than say the few buzzwords that are allowed on your censored cesspool of a preferred media site.
it happens with conversations about race everywhere on TikTok, conversations about problematic media everywhere on TikTok (we should never watch any Disney classic ever because each instance of a problem makes the media inherently bad because we shouldn't be expected to critically engage with the media we consume (HELLO?!)), conversations about genetic and ethnic diversity (hello eugenicists), whatever.
we are actively watching another corporation work in tandem with whatever body is funding them to radicalize our youth against the progress we've made in recent years by proxy of censorship and using their language against them. if we can strip the identities that these kids are "fighting for" down to consummable rot then we've already constructed the fringe groups their disgust-based moral grandstanding will allow them to turn a blind eye to's persecution. you treat your absolutism like gospel.
"furries are zoophiles" you will turn a blind eye to queer and neurodivergent persecution.
"from the river to the sea is antisemitic" you will turn a blind eye to Palestinian persecution if the two-state solution is implemented.
"black squares for BLM" you turned a blind eye to our persecution once the protests stopped.
"hillbillies/rednecks/hicks are all racists" you are turning a blind eye to the systemic disenfranchisement of a group of (typically some of the most open-minded) people because of their language/barriers to higher education.
you are more concerned about performing wokeism than advocating for the people who don't fit pretty into your politics and we are collectively cosigning this radicalization.
